In an article published today in the New York Times, I read about a whole new wave of opportunity for those on Twitter who have larger followings ... send your friends and followers an advertisement. Yes, you can now make a little money sending tweets to your followers that is actually an ad from an advertiser.
It appears that a growing group of celebrities, bloggers and regular Internet users are allowing advertisers to send commercial messages to their personal contacts. As the article reported, "It is perhaps the last frontier in advertising — getting regular people to send a sentence or two of text, on behalf of paying advertisers, to their friends and admirers. The idea, according to the entrepreneurs who are developing such services for Twitter and other Web networks, is that people trust recommendations from those they know and respect, while they increasingly ignore nearly ever other kind of ad message in print, on television and online."
Some of the brand new companies propping up to take advantage of this next wave of advertising distribution are Ad.ly, Izea, Likes.com (set to launch on December 8, 2009) and Peer2. In addition, the article reported, "Even the Internet giants are warming to the idea of harnessing informal chats between friends to promote their products and services. This month, Amazon.com said it would start paying commissions to individuals who refer buyers to the site via Twitter messages."
The goal of each of these companies is to get regular people who have a following to become spokespeople, without feeling like one. As Joey Caroni (co-founder of Peer2) states, “We don’t want to create an army of spammers, and we are not trying to turn Facebook and Twitter into one giant spam network. All we are trying to do is get consumers to become marketers for us.” I don't know how you feel, but it sure sounds a little like spam to me.
What really gets these new companies excited is the opportunity to connect less notable Internet personalities with the huge pool of smaller advertisers. The example given in the article was an expert on cycling, with 1,000 Twitter followers, might agree to send an ad about a new bike helmet — a message that might well be implicitly trusted by his followers. In a recent Google ad, Ad.ly is soliciting people to "tweet cool stuff and get paid."
For me this push by advertisers and this new crop of advertising companies takes away the authenticity of a product or service you really do like and want the world to know about. When you are solicited to tweet and get paid, it is very difficult to know that product, use that product, love that product and write about it. This new stream of advertising perpetuates the traditional way of doing business -- volume of intrusion (send out an advertising message to lots of people and most likely some of it will stick) -- except it now wears the latest wave of technology. Instead I like the idea of an product or service provider really earning their value and endorsement.
Unfortunately, now I wonder if I can trust my friends and those I'm following when it comes to telling me about the newest, latest, coolest thing? That's my thought, what's yours?
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