As our market is growing rapidly and maturity, competition, consolidation and so on kick in, and as pitches and clients are won by tooth and claw, how many will stick to their originally expressed ethical positions? How many will convince their clients of engagement and how many will cave to the pursuit of big numbers and volume over value, just to win the business? Why else would you chase numbers? Any monkey knows that it's not what drives success in these new spaces – with or without the theory of network dynamics.

That is what this is really about. It's not about scripts – it's about how far will you/we/they go, and where do you draw the line.

The above piece says to me that in our community – *our* community – the line is already under threat.

For me there is (as ever) a client-education job here as well. Marketing Directors love numerical metrics, and may be suckered into thinking that large numbers are always a good thing. Often they are, don’t get me wrong. But not always. Whereas, I’ll stick my neck out and suggest that PR Directors, who have a history of trying to navigate the space between pure numbers, influence and authority might see it slightly differently.

I may be naive and old-fashioned, but transparency has to win out in the long term, doesn’t it?

Alan Patrick’s article Social Capitalists and The New Feudalism points out that “the new follower’s best strategy is to suck up to the popular ones to get that all important link.” And advertisers will begin to value ‘celebrity’ tweeting on an OTS basis.

I tend to be somewhat cynical when assessing followers — I look at their profile, sure; but I also look at the friend/follow ratio. So — someone w/ 7K followers who follows around 7K people is generally (I’m afraid) off my list. Think that (as much as anything else) prevents me from following @wearesocial (ratio: 1.00) while leaving me happy to follow @robingrant (ratio: 0.20)