Is Twittering a Great Way to Communicate?

I have mixed feelings about Twitter. As I am sure you know, Twitter is the micro blogging service where you follow whomever you want and you send messages that are can have only 140 characters.

When it first arrived on the scene, many pundits weren’t sure if Twitter would catch on. But it did. The growth rates since its inception in 2006 have been mindboggling as millions flocked to Twitter in droves. Many Twitter zealots hailed the micro blogging phenomenon as a veritable revolution and predicted that it would replace many other forms of communications. As one wry observer wrote, why slave over a blog when you can Tweet in a fraction of the time?

But of all the social marketing tools out there, I believe that Twitter is the one which has changed the most. From being a fun, quick way to keep up with leaders in your industry, hook up with customers and get news well before the major news networks provided it. It has disintegrated into something else. Simply put, there are just too many people tweeting out there. You throw your hat into the ring and wonder if anyone, in the avalanche of twitters being sent, will ever see what you have written. More troubling, I believe that Twitter has turned into an enormous broadcasting machine, jam-packed with self-serving promotions and a plethora of advertisements.

Last week I started a new account under the name of my company masterthenewnet. I already had an account under my personal name but wanted to start tweeting on behalf of my company. In a mere 7 days, I received no less than 500 direct messages, 99% of which were pure advertisements.

Twitter is not what it used to be. Of course it is still possible to have real conversations with interesting people. But the din of millions of people hawking their wares makes listening to the ‘good stuff’ a challenge.

And now it looks like it is even going to get worse.

Enter TwitVid.

TwitVid, Twitter’s hosting service, launched a new product this week called SocialAds. The goal of SocialAds is straightforward—it is to get you (or your brand) more Twitter followers and/or retweets of your advertisements. In other words, the service in essence allows you to buy Twitter followers and retweets.

Buy your Twitter audience? That, to me flies in the face of the original spirit and intent of Twitter which was about freely conversing with people with whom you shared a common interest. Buying a Twitter audience harks back to the mass media days when we bought impressions for the privilege of broadcasting our advertisement.

This is how SocialAds work. You create your account and then setup an ad campaign. The ad campaign will focus on obtaining new followers or retweeting your ad The ads themselves are displayed within videos hosted by TwitVid . You pay only when the desired action is complete.

The bidding begins at $1US dollar per follower and $.75 per retweet. Whoever is the higher bidder will receive better placement.

According to TwitVid, participating brands can receive more than 400 new followers in less than an hour. Their statistics also show that 2 per cent of the viewers who are shown an ad will then follow the brand. However, there are no numbers which can guarantee that those followers will remain connected with the brand after a month and beyond.

This feels like advertising to me. This feels like the old world.

What is equally troubling is it appears that Twitter is considering offering the same kind of product. If you want more people reading your tweets, Twitter may offer you additional followers for a price. Think of it as a “Promoted Tweeter” product, which is designed to bump up follower numbers for your account.

It is still unclear what the Twitter product will look like. Some believe that Twitter will charge users based on the number of followers they acquire. Others believe that Twitter will create a product where the client is charged simply on the amount of exposure their Twitter account receives.

If indeed Twitter does develop products like these, it will represent an enormous strategic shift for the company. Since its early days, Twitter has frowned upon third-party companies who promise to build up follower counts automatically.

My first question is why the change of heart on the part of Twitter? My second question is for the potential clients. If you are going to ‘buy’ followers, the obvious question is how much is a follower actually worth to you? How do you quantify this? Without understanding this, I would think long and hard before investing money in some of the programs discussed in this article.

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