I don’t agree that skateboarding was ever a fad, it is still around and people have made an honest living doing this activity which is now featured in the X-games and is a now a multi-million dollar industry.

I can confidently say that skateboarding is a sport that is here to stay. However, when skateboarding first came around there were many naysayers who called it a ‘fad’, even comparing it to the Hula Hoop or Pogo Stick and many skateboarders had a rough time trying to justify the time they spent doing it. Check out Dogtown and Z-boyz or the late Heath Ledger playing ‘Skipperboy’ Skip Engblom in the feature film Lords of Dogtown for some background on what the guys went through in the early days of skateboarding.

I know I used to come to California for just that (see photo), but now I’m an SEO manager out here so it is my job to learn about new services out there that may help drive new traffic to the sites I’m promoting, but at what cost?

So with someting like ‘TWITTER’, I wonder if my time is better spent commenting on do-follow blogs (which pass PageRank without the ‘nofollow’ attribute in comment links) and other link-building initiatives?

Recently, I’ve seen and taken part in some discussions regarding Twitter and its role in SEO. Obviously if you have a lot of people following your ‘Tweets’ (messages similar to Instant Messaging(IM) but that go out to everyone on your list, sort of like a Reply-All on IM to all your following subscribers) then you may be able to get people to frequent your latest happenings online, such as blog posts, special offers or even have them get in on some interesting commenting discussions.

So, on to more about this phenomenon. Apparently Twitter isn’t going away anytime soon. Although there are lots people who think that it is very annoying, the debate is open which already helps anyone who is pro-twitter by exposure. See this article on MSNbc called ‘Twitter Nation: Nobody cares what you are doing‘ which touches on how some folks maybe just don’t understand Twitter, or do but don’t want to know what this ‘micro-blogging’ service is telling us every second about the folks you are following.

It really seems to be gaining momentum with the latest being a new partnership with MTV which may make this year’s event that much stranger. I also find that there seems to be small community out there promoting all these ‘new sociable networks’ as I’m running into the same people all the time now at things like the interactive SXSW conference. i.e. utterz and mashable. See this interesting post about the top 10 ‘most beautiful social networks‘

So for those who say that Twitter IS in fact a fad, I have to tend to think maybe they just can’t seem to get anyone to follow them. I have about 7 followers @kronis and I could fall into that category, but I am lately using its ‘direct message’ feature a lot to get in touch with people who I know are online after I see them ‘tweet’.

Usage: when you make a twitter message and would like it to privately go to someone on your follow list, just enter: “d username message”. This is identical to Instant Messaging and works well, so now that you know how it works, try it out and follow some ‘tweets’ or rants or promote your next foosball tournament or one-act play via your mobile phone, as this is killer for your iPhone.

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