While Nuffnang has been more known for it’s blog advertising platform, they’ve recently ventured into Twitter advertising. This was done with the now Beta; ChurpChurp.
Personally, Twitter is still at its unfancy stage but it’s quickly gain ground thanks to the adoption by many international celebrities. Also, Twitter advertising isn’t new for the technology and web followers today.
With ChurpChurp, it’s becoming additional fuel to the debate of advertising on Twitter. Especially when it’s involving personal relations or, what we call; Twitter-ers.
Some of Malaysia’s bigger voices have already voiced concerns over ChurpChurp for offering Twitter advertising.
I’M FOLLOWING SOMEONE WHO’S CHURP-POLLUTING MY STREAM. WHAT CAN I DO?
If you value his/her tweets, tell them via an @reply that you do not like it. Direct message them if they follow you.
Alternatively, you can always unfollow them.
However, if you feel strongly about this, feel free to drop a direct message to the @spam account on Twitter. Gareth tells me in a comment that its best to direct message the @spam account on Twitter, so as not to mistake your account as a spam account too.
Source: ByteBot
The reality, I suspect, is much uglier.
You’ll get irritated, annoyed by the in-flux of ads and seriously have your respect for the offending tweeter damaged.
“Just unfollow them!” I heard you say?
Well, I’ve thought about it. But I still love having conversations and being connected to those friends.
“Use another platform? What about Facebook?”
Well, those 20 friends don’t often chat on Facebook. The action takes place on Twitter.
“Well, why don’t you just tell them you don’t like that their allowing in-stream advertising?”
That’s probably the most sane approach. But as I hope you’ll start to see, it isn’t about to be so cut and dried. And if they simply refuse, well… it’s become a tough decision for you.
Source: David Lian
Naturally advertisers and entrepreneurs will see a large audience and associate that with dollar signs, not always the best reaction.
Due to the nature of Twitter, information is pushed out by people and displayed to their followers without any filtering (or any option for filtering). So if there is spam or ads in someones Twitter stream, everyone following them will see it (given they are online and ‘listening’ at that time).
This is bad when it comes to advertising, in a newspaper or magazine no one forces you to read the ads. But like on the TV when you’re watching a show you don’t have much choice but to see the ads if they are relevant or not and if you like them or not.
Twitter is similar to this, so I have a feeling ads will annoy people as Twitter is predominantly a personal platform for expression.
Source: Shaolin Tiger
Ultimately, I agree with the views and personal concerns of the quoted Malaysian bloggers here. However, in an economic crisis (some still preach), an alternative monetary channel isn’t such a bad thing.
For myself, I registered to ChurpChurp to ideally see what this new platform really has to offer in terms of rewards. But if the advertising does get out of control (and feel spam-ish), then it’s our personal responsibility to either:
- Lessen the spam.
- Ultimately, stop it.
However, I can’t say the same for Twitterers who don’t value their friends and have followers only to spam 1 another. Or, being Malaysian, they desperately create a Twitter account only for advertising.
As you can see, Nuffnang’s going to be taking on a new platform with many IFs which may be unanswered. So all we can do now is wait and see.
What’s your personal opinion about Twitter advertising?
I have nothing against Twitter advertising, but as in every platform, it should be done ethically and responsibly. For example, I have tried Magpie Twitter Advertising Network, they usually recommend using the tag ‘ad’ at the beginning or ending of your sponsored tweets. The frequency of sponsored tweets should also be regulated, like a sponsored post, perhaps in between two sponsored tweets there should be minimum 3-5 normal unsponsored tweets. Unfortunately it is difficult to differentiate between the two, so ultimately it depends on the attitude of the account owner.
So far Twitter advertising has not seriously affected my experience on Twitter (yet). There are more disturbing cases, short url service that spams endlessly with nothing but short url, not even a one line description, and people who tweet all-day-long about increasing their followers with a special product but they themselves are not a user of the product and they have much less followers than I do. I know these are a form of advertising but they are worse because they are concentrated spam efforts, their aim is nothing but pushing a single service or product down their followers’ (bird) throats.
A very insightful comment, Bobby. Not to forget, the problems of phishing and scams with the birth of shorten URLs. :)
this is not scam right?
If you’re referring to ChurpChurp, then no. It’s a Twitter advertising service. :)