David Armano has a great post that details the ways Twitter could be used commercially.
For those of you who don’t know, Twitter is a site that allows users to update friends and strangers alike on your whereabouts and activities. I’m just getting into Twitter myself. I remember using AOL Instant Messenger for the exact same thing in college. Almost everyone stayed signed on 24/7 and would always have some clever away message up if they weren’t at the computer. Twitter seems like a fun extension of that.
Armano writes that he hopes Twitter doesn’t become commercialized in the pay-per-post sense. That is, he doesn’t like the idea of a celebrity being paid to mention certain brands in their Twitter entries. He is quick to point out that specificity makes for a more compelling story, but not if it’s paid for.
I tend to disagree. As we all know, some commercials are also compelling stories. Some ad campaigns have even had cult followings. I would argue that advertising in all its ubiquity has become a medium for telling interesting stories.
On the other end of the ethical advertising spectrum, I find fake blogs and undisclosed pay-per-post troublesome. Undisclosed pay-per-Twitter presents its own unique problems. Twitter messages may be 140 characters or less, that doesn’t leave much room for disclosure.
Also, the only people who are likely to make any money from such endeavors are Hollywood stars. We already know that their time is basically for sale when it comes to product endorsements. It’s practically expected that if tabloid fodder like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, etc. are recorded doing, wearing or saying something, they’ve probably been compensated. For any of these celebrities, joining Twitter would be just one more way for them to monetize themselves.
The great thing about a site like Twitter is that you can pay attention to Paris Hilton’s channel, or you can ignore it and only Twitter with your friends. But it would be a different story if a prominent user of Twitter decided to start taking money without disclosing it. That would be a real ethics violation.
Maybe I’m splitting hairs here. Either way, I see the commercialization of Twitter and services like it as inevitable. What do you guys think?
Via the Scobleizer.
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steven e. streight aka vaspers the grate 02.21.07 at 2:10 pm
We don’t want paid, compensated, incentivized opinions, in the guise of blog boilerplate comments, breaking the Trust Web of the blogosphere, even if the compensation *is* disclosed.
To my mind, disclosure has nothing to do with it. If you say, “I’m compensated for spreading this opinion, but hey you guys, I really do sincerely believe it”…that’s contradictory. If you believed it, you wouldn’t accept payment.
“Honey, I love you, and I mean that, even though Brommell University is paying me $30 each time I say that, as part of an ethnomethodological study.”
See? Same goes with Twitter, I would venture to say, though I have not used it.