Katie Paine has done an excellent job of sorting all this out for years. I used to do freelance work for her back in the early 1990s, reading through volumes of printed press clippings to determine if the client’s true messages had been communicated, and calculating percentages of positive message deliver against overall coverage.

She’s evolved this to social media.
http://kdpaine.blogs.com/

Yes, its as much about listening now as communicating messages… more in fact.

“What’s the ROI from Twitter? A very difficult question to answer, yet you’ll find the solution if you can also measure: ‘What’s the ROI of a conversation in real life.’…”

There is a great deal of value in the conversations on Twitter. Ask many of the folks out on the roof tops of Teheran. The R in ROI is “Return” not “Revenue”

Thinking on that level however, I agree with Sam, they are only tools…

however, how we use them, how we intend others to see our use and how others intend to react in response is all so variable. there is no right nor wrong answer.. In my opinion, I think that’s what ultimately makes it all validly “social”… as opposed to programmed.

As far as the compressed communication fitting our distracted attention spans. I feel more like we’re in a virtual room with megaphones and blindfolds. I think the micro communication is a “easy way out” for standard relationship building – these tools are a magnificent means of opening doors that would otherwise not be visible…

as for playing.. I think too many of us are too serious too much of the time – and that just gets us ignored when others are in play mode. I think we need to follow the casual users sometimes and definitely just get out and play. – how many today pros got their start just playing? I think we need to remember that history.

I simply think it is about expanding communication, evolving social semiotics. How communication hubs like Twitter are used is almost irrelevant interest wise to me; far more fascinating is observing how they evolve.

@sam If only more marketers played. Play is the one of the best teachers and how I often get my Eureka moments.

I’m saying that marketing, like everything else, changes and morphs a great deal and we need to be very careful about applying tried-and-trusted views/definitions from one medium onto another (since I still think Twitter is a different form of communication than anything else out there now).

Sam