Clix Marketing PPC Blog

A few minutes after Guy Kawasaki’s keynote address at the Search Engine Strategies in New York this past March, I ran across Guy signing copies of his book Reality Check in a booth on the show floor.

I said, “Guy, I got death threats just for Retweeting what you said!”

(I hadn’t really; I was just making fun of the fact that while tweeting and retweeting during the keynote, I saw several (many) Tweets that were sharply critical of Guy and the Twitter tactics he was describing. Some of these were pretty darn vitriolic, and several were written by well-known people in the Search business.)

Guy replied, “Huh? What are you talking about?” He hadn’t yet heard about the negative reaction to his speech. That few minutes of blissful ignorance didn’t last long.

The brickbats tumbled forth, some of them from good friends of mine, and people who have earned a lot of respect:

He thinks Twitter is a tool. I think Guy is a tool.

It’s Come To This: Hiring Someone To Tweet For You

Is Guy Kawasaki Singlehandedly Ruining Twitter? (Part I)

Guy Kawasaki Twitter Spam

Guy Kawasaki: Twitter Spammer

The Spam Logic of @GuyKawasaki

And read the comments to this Sphinn post.

Guy is a friend – a year after he left Apple, I was hired to manage most of the functions he covered. I was, and I remain, surprised by the extent and depth of the criticism. I think I’m probably missing something -

So in the interest of trying to clear the air a bit, on Monday, 4/20 at 4 PM EDT (GMT-5), Webmasterradio.fm will broadcast my live 1-hour interview with Guy. We’ll discuss  wide range of topics, buy mostly his views on Twitter and whether his Twactics are spamming the Twitosphere, or legitimate value-added promotion.

To get a head start, watch the full keynote address here, augmented by simultaneously viewing the slides he used (PDF), and then read the articles via the links above. You might also like to see the resources Guy’s assembled on the topic, which includes the Full Story of Tweetgate.

Then, anytime before or during the interview, send your questions and comments to me and/or guy – @szetela and @guykawasaki. If you want to make your tweets part of a threaded conversation (as you should), include the hash tag  #ppcrockstars in your tweet. We will capture and archive the interview Tweets here. If you’re reading this after the beginning of the live show, you can download an archive from iTunes and other sources – see the top of this page.

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