Slashdot Mirror
Twitter To Start Selling Followers
Ellie K writes "While not quite as bad as it sounds, Twitter will soon be identifying followers with certain interests based on the content of their Twitter usage, and then providing this info to advertisers. Twitter is already selling sponsored Tweets for $100K or more. These reader comments captured the disquieting feeling I have: 'Twitter selling followers? Will that be the same as Google selling top position in SERP?' and 'I wonder when Facebook will start to sell friends.' Advertisers will be allowed to purchase placement in lists of 'who to follow' recommendations targeted to users with particular interests on Twitter."
Okay, this is a trend that Slashdot has been a little slow to adopt so it's understandable the editors don't understand it fully.
Application Programmer Interfaces or APIs for short is a concept on the web that means sites with large databases make most of their data available to programmers in machine-friendly requests and answers. Facebook and Myspace do this, so does Google and Yahoo!. There's several huge directories of all the APIs that are out there, and even companies such as The Mashery that help companies make their data available via APIs.
There's presently no Slashdot API but there really should be. Slashdot supports OpenID logins, but not the outbound usage of Slashdot user accounts on other sites. Really not keeping up with the times.
So, now that I've explained that concept, here's the question: How is Twitter going to sell follower info when it's easy enough to create free API requests that will return any recent tweet that mentioned whatever the programmer is interested in finding out about, complete with the username so the program can DM, @reply or retweet right away or forward the tweet to a human for review.
Companies that actively use Twitter the right way don't have to pay a cent to Twitter, the API is free. Only if you're clueless or not interesting enough do you have to pay for your promoted topic... just like those who do the web right get free search traffic from Google without needing AdWords. More or less, this new service translates to "We'll write your API app to find users likely to be interested in hearing from you so you don't have to." Uhm, isn't that also a fancy way of saying "your followers list"?
Google has been clear they've never sold search position, PageRank is their secret sauce for making search as good as it is, and they don't corrupt it with ads. They do, however, allow content-targeted ads to appear next to the search results but have always been clear to label what's an ad and what's content on the page.
Twitter's the same way. Every type of paid ad they've allowed gets marked as "promoted" which is their word for "sponsored" or "They paid to be next to the free content we just gave you."
U cnt hv my frst brn f off twtr
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This. The only time I thought "wow, maybe Twitter has a use" was during the American-sponsored protests of the election in Iran. But then I was reminded:
As is so often the case in the media world, Twitter's strengths are also its weaknesses. The vast body of information about current events in Iran that circulates on Twitter is chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable. It's impossible to authenticate sources. It's also not clear who exactly is using Twitter within Iran, especially in English. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the bulk of tweets are coming from "hyphenated" Iranians not actually in the country who are getting the word out to Western observers, rather than from the protesters themselves, who favor other, less public media. This is, after all, a country where the government once debated the death penalty for dissident bloggers.
It generally wasn't people running around watching things and sending updates on their mobiles. 140 soon-forgotten characters on yet another lazy Internet user medium isn't worth risking your life for when you're protesting such a government. The useful information was exported and placed on traditional and independent news sites/blogs.
I wonder when Facebook will start to sell friends.
Isn't that what Facebooks business model is all about?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_40/b4197064860826.htm
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/02/facebook-bigger-google/
0x or or snor perron?!