News Source: http://www.traffick.com
Published: Apr 02, 2009 - 08:02 am
Story Found By: Xurxo 1145 Days ago
Category: SEM
"If you strip away the black turtleneck (please don’t), the Silicon Valley pedigree, and the attitude, Kawasaki can be boiled down to the equivalent of the regional sales manager of one of those vacuum cleaner sales operations"
22 Comments
Comments
I wish I could Sphinn this twice or even thrice. Maybe I’ll set up a couple sock puppet accounts and fuel this one to the Front Page? Absolutely one of the best reads today and this is not an April Fool’s Day joke. Andrew rakes Guy across the coals and then does it again and again. Personally? I feel Guy deserves every bit of it and a whole lot more after his recent speaking engagement where he blatantly announced his abuse of Twitter. And I agree, people like Guy can and will ruin platforms like Twitter. I could list 10 names now that are in the same category as Guy. Just take a look at the top Twits and you can easily spot them. They follow the same tactics Guy does to some degree. I can tell you that Twitter doesn’t mind this at all. Guy is a tool for Twitter. But, Guy is sucking the life out of his little piece of the action. At some point, it has to come tumbling down. "If everyone listened to Guy Kawasaki and admired his Twitter tactics, Twitter would start looking more and more like a digital trailer park. Hey, that’s no shame and it’s no crime. MySpace’s digital trailer park is a pretty big revenue generator. But is that really where the Twitter founders expect and hope to wind up?" Great closing comments too!
Andrew always has a way with words and he’s right on the money once again with this one. Interesting that it took him awhile to formulate his opinion and at first thought Lisa was being too hard on him.
Another hit-the-nail-on-the-head post from Andrew; the "fake reciprocity" comment about Guy following followers back sums it up rather nicely. He’s clearly telling everyone that he has no time to engage with his followers, but he’ll follow you back because he’s not "a dick". There’s a disconnect there which a lot of people find easy to overlook, and Andrew has clarified the disparity between Guy the Twitter Guru and Guy the Twitter spammer.
After arrogantly brushing off critics as miserable virgins with no life, seo expert wannabes attack-baiting for traffic, or Twitter "noobs" jealous of his follower count, Guy Kawasaki decides to label tweets with his ghost writers’ initials while continuing to argue he did nothing wrong. Some people have the balls to man up when a mistakes been made, but it’s obvious Guy Kawasaki isn’t one of them.
It’s simple, if you don’t follow him you won’t get what he dishes out > stop complaining ’oh’ is Guy ruining twitter’ are you F@#$!@#$ serious.
I am curious about this response to Guy. Clearly he is the most successful brand on Twitter. How did he do it?Created a strong brandAdded content consistantly@Replied frequentlyReTweets frequentlyMade his stream about informationWhat has Guy Done that we wouldn’t recommend for a business to do? Are you mad that his personal brand is bigger/more successful than most businesses? There have been almost daily "How to leverage Twitter" posts on Sphinn that are rehashing things said by Guy or describing his behaviors that make him a powerhouse.Great, Twitter needs a Goat, but I think it should be Mashable. Mashable doesn’t reply, rarely retweets, and almost always links to Mashable.At least Guy Kawasaki offers both the original Doc. and an AllTop link so you can choose. If any brand did half as well at participating in Twitter as Guy does they would be a hero rather than attacked.
"As I rifled through my follow list, my heart was pounding. Was I really going to do it? Was I going to extricate myself from the biggest Twitter party on the planet? Could I really let go of @guykawasaki?" http://trippmichelle.blogspot.com/2009/03/ghost-tweeting-is-milli-vanilli-of-web.htmlI believe Michelle Tripp did a really great job of summing up how many people may feel after recent comments from the parties involved.
"I am curious about this response to Guy."Let me draw you a little roadmap my friend. You’re defending a man that would spit in your face and treat you like a number in his get-rich-quick scheme. So if you want to keep kissing his ass, be my guest. But everyone else who is too smart to play sheep, its a good time to hit "unfollow."
@halfdeckI’m not defending him. I’m just being realistic about the content. There are near daily "How to Exploit Twitter" posts on Sphinn. All of the people that feel Guy Kawasaki’s tactics are sleazy should stand up against them, but for the most part his followers are able to run rampant on Sphinn.
"for the most part his followers are able to run rampant on Sphinn."His Twitter tactics are generally sensible when applied to a corporate account. For example Dell hiring 20 ghost tweeters? Dropping links to Dell products? Mining tweets that mention the word "laptop" and sending 10,000 follow requests to hook a follow-back? No biggie. That’s what I’d expect from a corporate twitter account.But when people follow @guykawasaki, I bet most don’t realize they signed up to become one of his 90,000 zombie retweeters tricked into promoting a crappy RSS directory. When they get a tweet from Guy saying "thanks for promoting alltop, I really appreciate it" they expect that tweet to be authentic, not automated crap. For the die hard fanboys, Guy’s "success" on Twitter has nada to do with quality tweets or marketing prowess. @theEllenShow gained 569,913 followers (to Guy’s 90k) in less than a month (first tweet Mar. 10th) and she’s on par with Guy on retweetist when she does tweet. So according to you lapdogs, Ellen must be a real marketing genuis pimping out fresh, kick-ass content, right?You follow Guy dispite his random links to coffee.audi.frisbee.fatloss.viagra.alltop hoping one day either the sob will @reply to you, or reveal a crazy money making secret. You’re like photogz following around Britney Spears night and day.
Both Guy and Ellen use the same tool to leverage their followers, fame. Each had a large following before twitter. Ellen bribes her followers with tickets and a sense of being participant in show. Guy bribes his followers with a <b>sense</b> of being connected into the marketing machine.Guy Kawasaki is very-good at exploiting every new channel. That is what he makes money on, exploiting media and crowds. "Guy Kawasaki" is a business; like P.Diddy, or Jay-Z. He has assistants and a support network that most people can’t afford.If people don’t know what Guy is that is not his problem, and perhaps that is part of his system.
You’re comparing Guy Kawasaki to Jay-Z? Maybe you wanna join the line over there where people are waiting hours just to have a chance to suck his dick?
There are countless celebrities that create a business around their name: Martha Stuart, Tony Hawk, Tony Robbins, etc. To expect that any celebrity is performing a task other than shilling for something when they engage public media is naive.Understanding the social ploy is not the same as being a fan. I think that Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore, et al. are borderline in their use of the media. You obviously have strong feelings on the subject Halfdeck, but I don’t see you DeSphinning the regular "How to exploit Twitter" posts.I think automation is more of a threat than any one individual. The people that deserve to be called out are TwitterHawk and ReTweetist and TipJoy-- the people who are monetizing, automating and incentivizing the Guy Kawasaki/Pete Cashmore mentality.
"I think automation is more of a threat than any one individual."So we’re back to "nukes don’t kill people, people kill people" bullshit. Wonder why the US goverment invests so much effort on slowing nuclear proliferation.
Your metaphor is lame. It’s more like there are a bunch of people that manufacture tools to exploit Twitter and you are complaining that there are certain people who are very good at using those tools. No one gets killed by people who act like douchebags on Twitter.
Who gives two hoots if Guy is running a game on twitter. If you are branding yourself on Twitter you are already dead.
"It’s more like there are a bunch of people that manufacture tools to exploit Twitter and you are complaining that there are certain people who are very good at using those tools."Oh is that what I said? Keep drinking the kool-aid brother.
Michelle Tripp: Respec’!
Hey, is that all we get from you after all that discussion? Come on, get involved! :)
Yes, Guy’s keynote was certainly interesting. He said it’s important to "befriend" followers but made fun of followers when they began retweeting his peanut butter example.
Hey @pageoneresults, I tend to find staying out of the way leads to more comments sometimes :) -- my thoughts are also up at Traffick.com where the post resides, along with (more than here) comments. Talk about fragmentation of media!To be honest, I don’t have a whole lot to add (on this topic) right now, although I am formulating Part 2. Not knowing Guy Kawasaki personally, it’s a bit hard to stay mad at him. :) And unfortunately Part 2 may soften the assault on his character. Probably why I’m so reluctant to complete it... I have to stay strong and think up new insults (j/k)Here’s a serious point though. I’m just part way into the great new book The Brand Bubble by Gerzema and Lebar, and wrapping my head around the way that brand value can rise or fall, and the massive economic consequences it ultimately has for the shareholders of a company.I’ve alluded to such things on Traffick, regarding the degradation of brands like eBay, drip by drip. Ultimately that affects customers’ willingness to use them, pricing power, and yep in the end, stock price. That’s kind of a wake-up call - because the little things matter.It’s particularly ironic that Guy is associated with Apple, because that is one of the best brands of all time, one that has been so resilient and resistant to this type of degradation. And that is not an accident. That would lead me to think that no matter what he might have done for Apple at a certain point in time, Apple has been much, much better to Guy Kawasaki than vice versa. In other words lucky he’s not around there now to help erode its brand value.So there is this concept they’re bringing up in the book called brand "energy" - and it’s absolutely fascinating. I think everyone would agree that at this time, Twitter has fabulous brand energy. Everyone wants to talk about it, be around it, etc. How can a little microblogging service be surpassing mega properties like Facebook in terms of brand momentum and energy and "youthful" (Twitter’s biggest demographic is 35-49 so it’s fake youth) vitality? But it is.There is a huge material danger in letting the dominant use cases for Twitter become spammy and digital-trailer-parkish. And the founders know it, hence recent steps taken to clamp down on such uses. But all open, API-driven companies need to think about that stuff. "Wrap yourself around our valuable brand any way you want" has been a fashionable stance at this point in time. But has it been a mistake? Do all of the tedious apps, automated messages, and endless posturing begin to weigh on an Internet brand’s energy? Nowhere is the glib pronouncement "It’s all good" more off base than on social media properties like Facebook and Twitter.
Who care about what Guy is up to. Twitter is a load of old cobblers.