Twitter to Implement Ads: What's the Big Deal?
It was recently announced that Twitter would be implementing advertising into their site, however, clarification nor specifics as to how it would be implemented have been provided. Yet everyone is either jumping overboard, planning to, or being wishy washy on the subject. People, be serious. What’s the big deal? How is this different from your favorite blog that you read and leave comments on having advertisements or promotional posts? It isn’t.
People are going crazy and totally overreacting here. So what if someone you follow throws an ad in their twitter feed every once in a while? You obviously followed them for a reason in the first place, now because they have an ad every now and then it’s the end of the world? I don’t know where you live, but in America, we (I) believe in capitalism. How is earning a few bucks (or more if you can) a bad thing?
I’ve been hearing a lot of “we’ve built a relationship through twitter and by placing an ad in the twitter stream it breaks the trust” – newsflash: no it doesn’t. Again, how it is it any different than a blog posting advertisements in the post itself, the side of the post, below the post, or anywhere on the page? How is it different from placing ads in an RSS feed? If you use Twitter (especially now with lists) to aggregate content from blogs and dropped your RSS reader, well, what if your favorite blog has to make up that money somehow since RSS ad revenue is down. Enter Twitter ads… you would stop following your favorite blog(s) just for trying to make some money? I’m sure you still think their content is good. Who cares about the ads. Seriously.
Ads are a way of life. We are constantly bombarded by them every single day. Just because Twitter has been ad free (officially) for so long doesn’t mean it is required to stay that way. Imagine if Twitter will allow you to select which ad or a generic type of ad to share with your followers so that you approve of it. If you trust the person and they approved the ad with their own judgement, I don’t see any break in trust there.
All I’m saying is don’t be so harsh or irrational with regard to the topic of ads, they are everywhere. Trying to escape them is essentially almost impossible.