The week during which Twitter has been everywhere culminated in an appearance on The Colbert Report and a rumor that Google and Twitter were in late stage acquisition talks.
Twitter needs to worry about media over-saturation. It seems the company has been everywhere from CNN and FOX to Today to Colbert and the Daily Show.
The social media buzz is all about gauging the probability of Google or Microsoft buying Twitter for between $250 million and $1 billion depending on who you believe.
Twitter should be actively playing down this attention. The company should play up competitive and complimentary sites so as not to be seen as the only player in the space.
As a brand, you don’t want to appear to explode onto the scene. You want to appear to be on the front end of a large trend — the company that is doing it best. You build the brand steadily over time. Most companies of course don’t have to worry about this. Any attention at all feels like a gift. But, for the SecondLifes of the world, the fall — post blinding attention — can be pretty hard.
Duncan Riley had an interesting post on The Inquisitr tonight, talking about the possibility of Mashable overtaking TechCrunch (and sub-domains) as the leading Web 2.0 blog by Traffic.
Riley included graphs from Compete, Alexa, ComScore and Quantcast to illustrate his point. Of course, what and how you count matter. What is clear: Mashable is a close second and definitely within striking distance.
Compete shows Mashable at roughly 1.5 million uniques a month and TC at just over 1.7 million. Both are up significantly for the year. Compete says Mashable grew a bit last month and TC lost a few paces. That could have been due to TC founder Michael Arrington taking the month off. My guess is that trend is reversed with Arrington back and the addition of “Valley Girl” Sarah Lacy.
What is most interesting however is the graph Riley left out of his post — perhaps for obvious reasons… The ComScore graph shows the phenomenal growth of his own site.
Riley says he doesn’t believe the graph. Compete.com shows a more modest growth curve for The Inquisitr, but recall that Riley started The Inquisitr less than a year ago. He was a TC blogger so he knows what a successful tech blog looks like.
What’s the key takeaway? All three of these guys (Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr) are exceedingly bright, know how to work hard and have great teams around them. All three blogs should be at the top of your list if you’re looking for smart, thoughtful and influential coverage in the tech space.
Additional highly influential tech blogs you should be reading include:
Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch announced today in a post that Sarah Lacy will join as a permanent member of the tech blog’s editorial staff.
Arrington writes in TechCrunch: ”I’d like to welcome Sarah Lacy to Team TechCrunch as a permanent addition to our editorial and writing team. Lacy, …will continue to write Valley Girl, a biweekly column for BusinessWeek. She will also continue to co-host Tech Ticker on Yahoo Finance.”
Lacy joined the TechCrunch on an interim basis this last February to fill in for Arrington, who took the month off. Our guess is that was a trial run for both sides to see if a permanent gig at TC might be a good fit. It seems to have been.
Having just visited the new TC world HQ in Palo Alto and meeting the current editorial team, I can tell you TC only hires the best and the brightest. Lacy will fit in quite nicely.
Unlike TC writers before her who made their name at the august tech blog, Lacy is very much an established personality in Silicon Valley.
From Sarah’s BusinessWeek bio:
Lacy has been a business reporter for 10 years, most recently covering technology forBusinessWeek. Her book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, was published by Gotham Books in May 2008.
With that experience comes history — not all of it rosy. Lacy hosed a Q&A with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at South by Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) last year that went anything but smoothly and for which she was attacked mercilessly. coverage here, here and here. In the video below, shot immediately after the session, Lacy shares her point of view.
In my interactions with Lacy, I have found her to be smart, fair and responsive — key attributes of a successful journalist. She also has a likability, familiar style and air of approachability that provides a nice balance to Arrington’s perceived gruff arrogance. I say “perceived” because I personally find Mike to be fair, receptive and thoughtful. He’s a very smart guy and he made a very smart hire.
Marta Strickland of Organic, an interactive agency, posted an interesting deck on SlideShare. She does a nice job of giving specific examples, how-tos, stats and case studies on how brands are diving into social media. This ties in nicely with my post, Social Media How-to Guide: Getting Started. Marta uses terms like Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 that you can disregard, but on balance, this is a quality deck that is well worth having a look at.
Duncan Riley had an interesting 
Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch announced today in a 
Marta Strickland of Organic, an interactive agency, posted an interesting deck on SlideShare. She does a nice job of giving specific examples, how-tos, stats and case studies on how brands are diving into social media. This ties in nicely with my post, 