Online Media Cultist

Web producer, writer, online media cultist. That's how I roll.

Twitter-based ad networks: a different perspective

An ongoing conversation about the viability and credibility of Twitter-based ad network Magpie led Brandon J. Mendolson to come up with a nifty idea: republish our perspectives on the issue (I don’t have a problem with it as I see “sponsored tweets” as being a close cousin to sponsored blog posts, as I get into here, and Brandon is firmly against) on our respective blogs. Therefore, I present to you Brandon’s take on the issue in full, and as you’ll see he really has at it! And catch Brandon regularly at his Graduate Student Survival Blog – eb

Sponsor Tweets: Your Unwelcome Twitter Uncle
By: Brandon J. Mendelson

Before media ownership limits were reduced, print newspapers were plentiful and profitable. The loss of competition and cost cutting to please shareholders caused newspapers to grow stagnant and lose readership. As print readership declined, so did advertising dollars.

Blogs allowed individuals to report news, provide commentary, and serve as a community resource. As they grew in readership, advertisers focused their financial resources on blogs over papers. Will those advertising dollars find themselves budgeted for Twitter? No.

Twitter is blowing up as a source for headlines, not content. Blogs that regurgitate news have been replaced. Why bother reading a blog that makes brief, pithy comments before linking out when you can get the same thing on Twitter? Here’s the catch: Twitter has only changed the way some blogs operate, not replaced all of them the way newspapers are being replaced.

The attraction to Twitter is that it operates like a conversation. Blogs, even personal ones, do not update in real time the way Twitter does. They shouldn’t. It’s social media gospel that too many blog posts or tweets turn readers off. Do you think throwing in an extra tweet, an advertisement, would hurt or help your chances of building influence on Twitter? Trust the gospel on this one.

On your blog, a reader still has to leave a comment, that you may or may not approve. You also have to deal with Trolls and spammers, a rarity on Twitter. Conventional wisdom also dictates successful blogs focus on specific topics, as opposed to a specific person … unless that person is a known commodity. Popular Twitter users are people, not narrowly focused media outlets.

Since I have been blogging, dating back to 1999, I have found including advertisements was and remains acceptable as long as you explain upfront that you will be advertising. There was a shock when the post 2003 blogs started to advertise; however, blogs lend themselves to advertising thanks to their flexibility in design and content. Twitter does not have either as a luxury.

Twitter is not designed to be a media outlet. In fact, Twitter wasn’t designed for anything beyond answering the question, “What are you doing?” All of its other uses were user generated.

Twitter is designed to operate as a conversation. Inserting an advertisement into the middle of a conversation is disruptive. Think about how you would react if your friend, in mid-sentence, made an unrelated commercial announcement before resuming what they were saying? I realize some blogs do this, but unsuccessfully and to the reader’s chagrin. On a blog, you have options to avoid torturing your readers with certain methods of advertising. In Twitter, you have your conversation and only two ways to advertise: Disrupt the conversation or advertise on the background.

The expectations of Twitter followers are different than blog readers. This was not always the case, but with blog / newspaper hybrids such as The Huffington Post, we have come to expect blogs to be monetized in some way. Twitter, as a conversation, is not designed for monetization. This may change, but the format and conversational style today does not lend itself to monetization the way a blog does.

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Date
December 1st, 2008

Author
Eric Berlin

Category
OMC

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  • Brandon, very interesting take and thanks so much for your great republishing idea ! Now obviously we have very different opinions about this issue, which is what makes all of this so much fun to debate, poke holes in, pontificate about, etc. :-)

    That said, I'll just point out a several quick things that struck me:

    1) You did not mention online media's role in the decline of newspapers/print media and print ad sales. Is it your view that online media had no role here?

    2) You state that Twitter was not "designed to be anything" and yet you attempt to strictly define it as a place for "headlines" and "conversations" at a few different points. My view is that Twitter is a wonderfully open and flexible platform that helped to create a platform for conversations, link sharing, *and* a nascent publishing form called microblogging.

    3) You also state that Twitter "is not designed for monetization." Is it your view that blogs were not originally designed for monetization as well?

    My overall opinion is that microblogging is brand new and flexible to many different kinds of uses (including monetization) just as blogging was in a similar position just a few short years ago. And newish platforms like TwitWall (which allows comments to be tied to Twitter comments) and FriendFeed are bending and playing with the "rules" as we know them evermore.

    It's interesting times as I always like to say -- and glad to engage you in this debate on OMC Brandon!
  • Hi Eric,

    As promised ...

    1) I think, purely from an advertising and marketing perspective, that online media was able to supplant print media because of declining readership from the papers. Advertisers, the spine of the old media, decided to invest their money elsewhere.

    I'm convinced if this did not happen, much (but not all) online media outlets would struggle for relevancy among mainstream Americans.

    That said, I follow the shift workers and not the digerati, so I know I am in the minority on this one.

    2) I always thought blogs were designed with the intention of being monetized. The second (the royal) we figured out we could publish and design, we searched for ways to cash in. Just think about banner advertising in its heyday, those things were everywhere, even on the smallest sites and blogs. The flexibility of the design lent blogs to be monetized as fast as they were created.

    3) There is a contradiction in my argument. Essentially, Twitter (as far as the designers were concerned) was not designed to do anything beyond answering the question of "What are you doing?" I could be way off on this, but that's my impression.

    The usage of Twitter in replacing blogs, I think, is limited to headlines and pithy comments. You're right in that it is open, but much of the innovation on Twitter has been user generated. Look at services like Mr. Tweet, Twitpics, Tweetlater, and Magpie. Twitter itself (as far as I know) does not participate in the creation of those services, so that lends me to think the service was simply designed for one thing, and we are grafting parts on to it. There's nothing wrong with that ... except for advertising ... and that's for now.

    One thing I didn't touch on: When you follow a brand, and the brand converses back with you, that can be effective as a method of advertising through Twitter. In that case, people are choosing to follow the brand, whereas with Magpie the advertisement is thrust upon you.
  • Does it really matter where the innovation came from though -- through the "original design" (wow, that makes it sound like we're verging on a theological debate!) or through the users who came later? The fact remains that an open platform set the stage for a wide range of uses, one of which could be a means to allow popular and valuable publishers for their work.

    In any event, I think we're going to have a fundamental disagreement on the scope and use of Twitter i.e. you believe it's constrained to headlines and pthiness, whereas I see it as a full fledged publishing platform.

    The fun part is that we get to both get to see who's right :-)
  • desaraev
    Interesting thoughs, but twitter and other places already are being a little over run. We should all step carefully.
  • Yeah, I think the "signal vs. noise" debate will be going on for a long time to come. A key for any advertising service that succeeds on Twitter will be to keep noise to a reasonable level while being relevant.
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