When reading through an AdAge article this morning about the recent news of Twitter and Yahoo! integration moving forward, I was quick to jump on the bandwagon of skeptics.  I knew there had to be a way that this relationship wouldn’t prove to be completely successful.  Why did those thoughts pop into my head?  Good question… and it’s one that is reminding me about an important concept in media/marketing – common sense.  I realized the thoughts stemmed from the fact that I don’t frequent the Yahoo! network of sites.  It’s natural for me to jump to a conclusion based on my own usage patterns.  I most likely won’t be knee-deep in the Twitter/Yahoo! integration, but common sense tells me a good number of the 600 million+ worldwide users of Yahoo sites will.

The move is smart for Yahoo! because it provides a new real-time social infrastructure they didn’t have previously.  Being able to communicate via this widely-used tool right on a familiar platform will most likely increase time and engagement on Yahoo’s properties.  The integration is smart for Twitter because it extends its reach to the monstrous bucket of Yahoo! users and provides a new revenue stream for the micro-blogging service.  In other words – there’s no reason right now for me to think this partnership will fail – regardless of what the heck I’m doing online.

Based on this example, I ask this of you:  As a marketer, make sure you are always taking a step back to take a look at the facts and do your homework.  Even when you are the exact target for your brand, there are a ton of other factors that can impact a media and marketing plan that extend well beyond your own behaviors.  It may be common sense, but it’s often overlooked.

Tags: Microblogging, Twitter, Yahoo