Now that twitter seems to be a media darling and an acquisition target, I thought I would share some of my observations.

1. Tweets are the blog posts you thought about writing, but didn’t feel they had enough substance.

Steve Gillmor and I were talking about his workshop at Web 2.0 about attention trust, and since I won't be able to attend today I thought I would blog some thoughts I've had on attention management.

Last week the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council hosted its annual spring conference. This year’s conference, of which Novell was a proud sponsor, focused on “China, India, and Russia - Our Partners in the New Global Economy. There was an impressive list of speakers led off by Dr. Lawrence Summers. In addition to being an economist by trade, Mr.

Creating a powerful and compelling brand. The holy grail of many if not most marketeers - indeed I’d say of most companies. Stating the objective is simple, getting there is not. In a world of commodity phrases and empty promises it takes work and discipline to position one’s company in a distinctive, credible, relevant and enduring way.

I was watching an interview with Donald Trump the other night and he asserted that he believes that the current economic climate is the perfect opportunity for “the new entrepreneur” to rise to the top. I certainly hope he is right. I am not a brand new entrepreneur, but my company is extremely entrepreneurial. The old is being peeled away, and companies are reinventing themselves and how they communicate. We are no exception. Not that long ago, we took a drastic step in eliminating an explicit sales role from our team.

Does Twitter drive business impact? Does your blog convert new customers? If you engage in every LinkedIn conversation in every group you participate in, does it leverage more leads than the banner ad you ran last month? More importantly, with the explosion of Web 2.0 Marketing, where should you put your efforts, you dollars, and your company message? And how?

What a dilemma!

You are asked to reduce budget, cut costs, reduce expenses. However, you need your BEST to gain market share, compete for customer dollars and emerge from the recession as a winner. You need the best employees, technology, service, partners, vendors, and agencies so you can outsmart and out-execute competition. You need the best to drive demand when marketing rules are being reinvented by customer conversations. You need the best because, more than ever before, the quality of your inside is visible to the outside, and that market is judging with their wallets.

There are lots of beauty pageants out there for companies looking to raise money, but in my experience, if you want to raise money, it’s probably best not to ask for it in public. Better, tell the world what you have accomplished, not what you need. That’s the idea behind “Launch: Silicon Valley,” which Garage developed in conjunction with our friends at SVASE several years ago.