It never ceases to amaze me that lack of insight companies put into their “social media strategy”. Why do companies think that just putting up something on the Internet means they are going to generate business as if the World owes them a favour.

The fact is putting up a Facebook page or creating a Twitter account for your company doesn’t mean you’ve gone all Web 2.0. The “social” part of social media means engaging and interacting with people - this isn’t simply a broadcast medium.

No this isn’t in reference to my recent lack of posts for which I can only apologise - most of my spare time (of which there isn’t enough of) is spent with my 12 week old son. A pretty good excuse I think you’ll agree so don’t be too hard on me.

An article in Wired says Blogs are so 2004 says blogs are overcome with a “tsunami of paid bilge” so “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”

Hmm a little overreaction methinks. The Internet as a whole is full of paid and unpaid bilge so maybe that should be shut down?

Really it’s all a case of quality control which is also going to be the case of the other technologies mentioned in the article such as Twitter.

How do I find blogs? Well it isn’t a conscious decision on my part; I simply find them on my travels around the web. If I happen to surf onto a post of interest I will look at other posts in the blog and if they’re really lucky and I like what I see I’ll subscribe to the RSS feed. I’m the quality control and my quality control is tight - I subscribe to about 50 feeds in total which I don’t consider a lot as I’m a pretty heavy Internet user. This list is constantly reviewed if I don’t like the way a blog is going I hit the delete button - not really that difficult. Recommendations I like too as that web is a rather large place.

It’s just the age old web spam issue which the search engines are constantly fighting anyway - blog or webpages alike it makes no difference.

There is a terrible affliction spreading slowly in some digerati circles and it’s called Twitter fatigue. It tends to creep up slowly on people but eventually means their previous enthusiasm for Twitter is leached away.

So why is this happening to some people, myself included? I think ironically some people’s over-enthusiasm can be the cause for others loss of interest or even annoyance at Twitter. Why people feel the need to Twitter every trivial piece of information is a little beyond me surely they have better things to do…surely?

I do think it does depend on your use of Twitter too. If you are just checking your Twitter feed regularly or using the numerous Twitter applications available to filter the incoming information maybe you stand a chance against the tsunami of useless Tweets. If you use Twitter’s built in filtering and have Tweets coming straight to your mobile I think you’ll get tired of your text tone very quickly.

Paul Bradshaw has an excellent post on the OJB giving a wide range of information about the best use of Twitter. It does have a slant for journalists however as I would expect Journalists to be following a great deal of sources, a guide for help them might help the rest of the Twitterverse.

After cutting off Tweets to my mobile a few weeks ago I think maybe it’s about time I reviewed the alternatives to make my Tweetlife more manageable.

Twitter Japan has launched and it has one thing that we don’t see over here - adverts!

So Twitter are trying the old tried and tested advertising model to bring in some cash. Lets just hope it brings in enough for them advertising on the site and they don’t need to spam everyone with advertisements to their mobile phones! That would kill Twitter dead in no time at all!

UPDATE: Gary Andrews has posted with more details about the current media attention Twitter is receiving and also has some wise words about how companies should approach what may be a new media for them.