Answer Guy Central

So it turns out that young people have stopped blogging.

Really? When were they?

It was only a few months ago that kids thought Twitter was stupid, and unsafe. Now, young people are embracing the world’s hottest social networking site in droves. But the impetus for this change isn’t that Twitter has become any better; the deal here is that regular blogging takes too long, while just spewing your thoughts 140 characters at a time is easy!

When I told you a few months ago that Miley Cyrus had stopped using Twitter, my commentary ran toward how bad a business decision that was. My recent comments about Kim Kardashian and her $10,000 Titter posts have been about business change in the advertising world and how things that look unimportant can be huge.

Then, there are my own recent thoughts that blogging, as important as it (or something like it) is to your future business success, might be “over” if only because there are so many blogs being written, often about the same thing. Clients ask me about that idea all the time. Is it too late to blog?

All of this ponits, ultimately, in the same direction: the amount of business change we’re going through at this moment in time might be unprecedented, and unique or not is a lot to manage. But manage it we must.

“Young people have moved from blogging to Twitter“? Then if you want to do business with them you’d better be there too, and understand how it works. Or, just do nothing; your competitors would love that.

Did you hear the one about the CEO who wanted to create business change that would hurt his company?

No, I’m not talking about Miley Cyrus killing her Twitter account. Yesterday, Evan Williams, CEO and founder of Twitter, said that he wants, really, really badly to kill off the “suggested user” feature of Twitter. I say “hooey”.

Make no mistake: Mr. Williams doesn’t want to kill that feature; he just wants it to be of more utility to Twitter (and, I’m happy to say, to users).

If you think about who benefits from Twitter, it isn’t the “user”. It’s Ashton Kutcher. It’s the aforementioned Miley Cyrus. It’s anyone who can convince many, many people to follow them, and then somehow turn that into a marketing machine. So no, Evan Williams doesn’t want this feature to go away; he wants more people to get value from it so that they will keeping using Twitter.

Done right, this can be a business change that will help Twitter survive. To find the business changes that will help you, just ask yourself what has to happen to keep people coming back. If you like, you can even ask me.

Oddly, the answer might be “yes”.

A few days ago, teen queen Miley Cyrus enacted one of the worst business changes ever when she quit using Twitter. I don’t follow her, and don’t really care. But I commented then that it was incredibly short-sited, and now that Jimmy Fallon has done what might be the funniest parody of her parody — and the parody that is Ms. Cyrus’ life, It’s time to take a look:

And then ask yourself. When is business change a good idea, and when is it awful?

While there’s no “answer” to that question (and while dear sweet Miley gets a pass for bad judgement based on her age), you need to be ready to make decisions based on changing issues. For someone with two million loyal followers on Twitter to stop using it is throwing away millions of dollars. For me to stop tweeting to my not-quite-a-thousand followers is another story.

Be ready for business change. CREATE that change when the situation calls for it. And know when you need to protect the status quo.