It was inevitable that this was going to happen someday, but it’s also kind of a bummer.
The beauty of Twitter to me has always been that it’s organic and allowed me to connect with friends, colleagues, bands and brands in unique ways.
Even as a follower of certain companies & brands, I never felt like I was being shouted at to ‘LOOK HERE! BUY THIS! CLICK NOW!’, but more that I was able to engage with someone from the brand directly in a digital conversation if I wanted to. Essentially I felt like I was getting a sneak peak at what was going on with the brand from a day to day perspective. Of course, not all brands using Twitter follow a model that embodies putting unique content out there for followers, some purely do just yell at people to buy their stuff. That’s a whole other story, but this advertising model could only enable that more.
That said, I’m not sure if the new Twitter advertising model is going to make its users very happy. The model will start out small apparently, but will closely mirror Google’s paid search advertising structure. So, when you go to look for Sue Smith on Twitter, you’ll find an ad for “Sue Smith drinks Joe’s Cola. Click here!” Well, maybe it won’t be that blatant, who knows, but that’s the model.
According to a story in the Wall Street Journal: “Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams and co-founder Biz Stone have been publicly lukewarm about advertising, suggesting it could irritate users,” so only time will tell how this is going to go.
Based on that statement alone, this should be interesting…