The Boston Herald has bad news today for the Twitterverse:

Bitter over Twitter ads

Twitter has rolled out a new advertising platform that disguises promotional tweets within the normal stream and risks major backlash from users.

“Because it’s really short-form, a lot of people have grown to view Twitter as an essential form of fast communication,” Carl Howe, vice president at the Hub-based Yankee Group, told the Herald. “Ads make this an essential form of slow communication. It ends up polluting the well.”

 

Here’s an example that Sneak ADtack! management received a short while ago:

 

 

By itself, no big deal, right? But undoubtedly annoying in numbers.

 

According to the Herald piece, though, sponsored tweets are a life-and-death matter:

 

The beauty of Twitter was that they hadn’t turned into Facebook,” [Yankee Group’s] Howe said, referring to the increased number of ads within the social network.

He noted that the purity of communication on Twitter was even credited for the political uprisings that became known as the Arab Spring.

“Nobody would have wanted to see a protester get shot because they were busy swiping away a promoted tweet,” Howe said. “That’s what happens when you add noise to essential communication.”

 

Seriously? Shot while swiping? Come back to earth, Mr. Howe.

 

 

John R. Carroll is media analyst for NPR's Here & Now and senior news analyst for WBUR in Boston. He also writes at Campaign Outsider and It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
John R. Carroll has 305 post(s) on Sneak Adtack