Twitter and opportunistic marketing

Marketing Mystic weighed in on the connundrum of "free" social sites:

"Given the recent uproar over Twitter outages, the question begs to be asked (and answered), if you aren’t willing to pay for a service, should you be whining when it doesn’t deliver? What, if any, should your expectations be from a free service? Conversely, if you are a free site/platform, how do you justify additional investment in your company, if you don’t have any means of generating revenue?"

My answers:

1. No
2. Limited, since if it's important enough for me to complain about I'll pay for some level of service, and
   
3. Not my problem

The important issue for me is slightly different: Should I recommend a client invest (time, marketing resources, etc) in a "free" service? The answer: Sure, as long as it's right for that client.

Call it opportunistic marketing. If a free service evolves into the right channel to reach the right people, it's worth exploiting. Realize, of course, that you're not basing your marketing strategy on that free ride (you better not...), and that your opportunity might evaporate once the venture money runs out, but that's the nature of being opportunistic. Use it while it works.