I think the big picture that companies need to realize is that slow and steady wins the race in communications and community building.

The big problems arise when companies see certain channels – such as Twitter and Facebook – as a cheap and fast cure-all for their marketing plans, failing to realize that in the offline world, they rarely – if ever – rely on one or two marketing platforms, so why would you do the same with your online marketing?

The biggest thing I always tell clients is that they shouldn't be on Facebook or Twitter just to be there – but that they need to understand how these tools fit into the big picture, and whether the time and financial investment is worth it.

Great convo, everyone!

All of the reasons that you state above and Lauren added are valid. The space is not 100% reliable, therefore putting all of your eggs in the basket because it is cheap is a very flawed model.

I see SM as I do PR a support the business model rather than something to blow it out and save some Benjamins.

The big issue with that is that the middle of last year is right when Twitter was experiencing its massive consumer and business growth, so those capacity issues were understandable. Now, as it tries to implement mainstream sponsored tweets, an ad platform, etc., it's having the exact same capacity issues, and while its user numbers are still growing at a pretty robust rate, it's certainly not seeing the same massive month-over-month growth it was seeing during 2009 when the Fail Whale was a common occurrence. So, what's causing all of these issues, and again, it goes back to the main point of my post: If Twitter can go down almost daily due to capacity issues, why would any business want to place a significant amount of its resources into a marketing channel so unreliable?