Tech Blog

[#1]

Over the last couple of months, out of personal interest, I've been watching the development of the Tweet for $$$ discussions and the development of a variety of services piggybacked on 'the Twitter.'  You may have already seen them as they're usually marked with the hashtag #spon.

The latest, and most popular amongst some is the newly released Sponsored Tweets service -- a Pay Per Tweet service.

It seems like a simple thing: Signup for an account, specify your 'niche' -- the interest areas you often tweet about and your followers are interested in, set your per-tweet price, and approve any incoming request that fits your niche. Once approved, a tweet will be sent into your twitter stream by the service, and your account will be credited.

Simple right, and the money starts rolling in.

But wait. Do you actually use those products and services that are being pitched at your followers? If not, and if you're not ready to defend or discuss that tweet with your followers, you could be doing serious damage to your reputation, your online brand.

Especially as happened with this tweet I received recently. It appeared to come from someone I enjoyed following.

But it seemed a bit out of character, so I checked out the link, and was directed to this screen.

Notice the difference between the tweet text, and the resulting website. It appeared that I was outside of the geographic region the advertiser targeted.

Frankly, I was disappointed. I didn't expect to see a twitter ad in that stream. The ad didn't suit their niche, and it obviously wasn't targeted at me either. This was like getting aflyer in the mailbox for a timeshare...so not interested.

And I stopped following that person. One bad tweet and I was gone. But that got me thinking; what would happen if I opened my twitter stream up to sponsored tweets. I also asked my followers.

The resulting discussion was informative. Most declared that they'd not enjoy receiving #spon tweets from me because it's not the reason they decided to follow me in the first place. I'm not a retail outlet, as Future Shop is. If my followers chose to follow the Future Shop Deals Twitter account, they know that the content from the Future Shop stream is going to be marketing content that they're interested in receiving.

In my case, my twitter stream is not about that, and to suddenly insert #spon tweets, which have little relevance or interest to my audience, into that stream is outside of the expectations they had when they decided to follow me.

From that I conclude that I'd not be doing my followers any favours, or, perhaps annoying them. Conclusion: sponsored tweets aren't for me.

But, what about you? What do you think of sponsored tweets in a twitter stream? Would you open your stream up to sponsorship? Why, or why not?

[#2]

Sponsored tweets cross one of the few distinct lines in the Twitter world: the line between dialogue and monologue.  Twitter allows for both types, but owing to the nature of the two, dialogue usually happens with personal accounts and monologue with corporate accounts.

The vast majority of active Twitter users engage primarily in dialogue.  One of the reasons Twitter is so popular, of course, is the fact that it allows people to feel closer to their favourite celebrities.  The celebrities who use Twitter best are those who manage to communicate personally with fans--obviously they can't respond to every @ reply, but they catch the general trends, answer common questions, and in general treat fans more like peers than peons.  The same goes for corporate accounts that engage in dialogue.

When a Twitter user switches to monologue, any input from other users gets ignored.  It's like standing on a street corner and shouting 140-character announcements to passers-by.  Aside from the mass-following spammer robots and the impersonal celebrity accounts, the major perpetrators of this are corporate accounts that exist solely to publish announcements to Twitter.  Sometimes this information can be useful, sure, but I think it dilutes the real power of Twitter, which is two-way communication instead of one-way.

But I digress. Returning to the subject at hand: tweeting sponsored advertisements is a form of monologue.  It's difficult to engage in honest conversation about a service or product one has been paid to endorse.  Worse still, sponsored tweets taint the user's entire Twitter feed; even if one uses a hashtag to clearly mark sponsored tweets, the seed of doubt has been planted, and it becomes hard to tell if a user is tweeting about something because he or she is truly interested in it or because he or she thinks it will be profitable.

Let me be clear that I'm not against monetizing one's Twitter activity as a general concept.  I think that, in most cases, one should try to keep one's personal Twitter activities as separate as possible from any monetary ventures on Twitter (i.e., separate accounts).  I don't approve of sponsored tweets at all, for the reasons stated above, and because I think it's a backward way to monetize one's account.  Twitter is all about personal communication and interacting with one's followers (and those one follows).  Therefore, the best way to monetize one's account, especially one's personal account, is to use Twitter as a way to drive more people to one's website, product, or whatnot.  Get them interested in you, not your tweets.

[#3]

This is going to stink worse than the fail whale. I know, seems logical that there should be a way to monetize your Twitter stream, but I think it's almost like monetizing your IM conversations. It's too personal. Having ads around posts on a blog, sure you can over look them and just move on. But in a twitter stream, I think it would lead to mass unfollow. I'm pretty sure that if someone I didn't know started following me and had a stream littered with ads, I wouldn't follow them back. Block? No, but I just wouldn't follow them back.

[#4]

@tachyondecay: Twitter is a weird beast. It's no longer really just 'what are you doing'. It's 'Hey, I think this is important...what do you think? ' or ' hey, social media guru available'...etc. But it is about broadcast, it seems. And you're right...if someone you've been following suddenly starts talking about and linking to hair removal products, then the perception of the source changes. And loses credibility and value. Good point re: tweets should add value and encourage interest in the sources *other* online assets...blogs, website, etc. That's how microblogging should be done.

@trisshussey: That's my thinking...I do review tweets of folks who follow me to see if their tweets are appealing to me or not. Ads generally don't appeal to me, nor do tweets about 'helping others find success in online business' etc. And don't get me started on Twitter Spam -- where someone RT your tweet, but changes the short-link to another website about a product or such.