Pay Per Tweet: Or How to Get Unfriended in One Click

The New York Times recently ran a story highlighting the growing advertising trend where companies pay high-visibility Twitter users to post status updates about company products or services.  You can read about it here.

The controversy behind “pay per tweet” lies in its surreptitious nature.  It is difficult for a reader or Twitter follower to know when a tweet arises from the author’s own unvarnished opinion or if the author is merely parroting the company brochure.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being a spokesperson for a product you believe in.  Advertising isn’t a crime.  But covering up advertising is. The real issue is transparency.

Of course, advertising transparency is not novel to social media sites like Twitter.  For years, advertisers have paid bloggers to write favorable product reviews.  And the print “advertorial” has been around forever.

To avoid reader backlash and torching credibility, reputable and successful bloggers do a good job of disclosing their affiliations.  Likewise, magazines avoid editorial conflict of interest by presenting advertorials differently than regular articles–they advertorials basically look like ads.

The problem with Twitter is the 140-character limit to status updates reduces the likelihood that the author will explicitly disclose any advertising affiliations.  The danger is that the follower will take tweets at face value.

I doubt this danger exists in reality.  The vast majority of social media users view the Internet with a jaundiced eye.  Everything online must be taken with a grain of salt.  Presuming Twitter followers are too uninformed and gullible to realize when they are staring at an ad presumes an inordinate level of stupidity.  If you’re savvy enough to turn on the computer and sign up for a Twitter account, you can spot marketing schlock and flackery a mile away.

Social media users are plenty smart enough to know when they are being sold to.  And, over time, the swift justice of the cloud crowd effectively sniffs out fraud and deception.

If you are getting paid to tweet, I reckon you already know all of this.  You’ve managed to maintain your credibility.  You’re as brutally honest and descriptive about what you had for lunch today as you are truthful about your corporate sponsorships.  That’s how you built your strong social media following in the first place.