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.

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Microsoft recently entered into talks with News Corporation over a plan that would remove links to their news content from Google, while also providing exclusive access to Bing. An even broader approach has been rumored, with Microsoft proposing similar deals to other online publishers. Such drastic measures are being viewed as a direct assault on Google’s position in the search market.

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