Twitter informs bus how to spam better.
Promoted Tweets—that’s what they are being called.
It was only a matter of time before something like this had to happen–Twitter had to monetize their efforts.
I am intrigued by this, but I’m also very wary.
I am intrigued because, unless Twitter has just been pulling the wool over our faces, they do generally care about user experience and making it very difficult for spammers to cloud my stream. They have always been very transparent about their efforts, and they have made great strides in the past 6 months or so to prevent excess spammers from following me. I believe they have the best of intentions with this effort as well. Sure they do want to make some money, but I see no reason why they would slack on this in their effort to provide the best possible experience with these Promoted Tweets.
If I search for web design work in DC, and I get a promoted tweet about a large design firm, then that’s not really going to help me out. Or if I search for allergy remedies and get generic search results like I normally get on Google where the big names just buy every term and don’t focus on what I want, then that’s also not going to help me out. But if I search for a DC social media group, and a company who sponsors a lot of social media events locally has a promoted tweet, then I can see some benefit.
However, I am wary about this because it may provide just another avenue for spammers to do what they do best: steal money and annoy the shit out of me. I assume Twitter will have some semi-arduous approval process, or maybe even an Apple-like iron curtain, but there is sure to be some way for spammers to get around this.
I suppose there’s no real way to monetize something without taking some amount of spam along with it, but I just hope they remain user-centric, steadfast and vehemently against spam as they have of late.
