I’m going to make this is as plain and simple as I can – businesses SHOULD ABSOLUTELY NOT use the new sponsored tweets system.
The most successful businesses on the web are those that have established themselves with trust. The way you do this is through consistently delivering great content, information, products, or services, and in turn building “trust equity” with an audience.
In today’s day and age of technology and the Internet, people DO NOT want to be marketed “at” – they want to purchase from a business that they can trust, and a business they are proud to tell others about.
With this new path of sponsored tweets, are we not once again creating a platform of mediocrity and spam?
If spamming people via email didn’t work – and in fact led to a The Can-Spam Act of 2003 which makes it illegal to spam through email – what makes anyone think that Twitter is any different.
You want a quick solution to depleting your followers virtually overnight? Start spamming them!
My opinion here is that it’s a bad move by Twitter to be involved with such activities, and certainly the wrong path to go down as a way to generate revenue.
One alternative for Twitter that I think would be much more profitable for them – follow Google’s lead with search marketing and text advertising in the search results.
With Google Adwords generating over $15 billion in revenue (and growing), Google’s got a great model for Twitter to follow.