The Scariest Thing I’ve Seen All Halloween!

October 31st, 2008 by GCI Canada Staff

These words just sent a chill up my spine: “You allow us to twitter in your name.” Arggghhhh! Begone ye abomination back to whence ye came!

OK, Halloween-themed dramatics over, but it’s still a scary thought. A company using my Twitter name to send out ads to anyone who follows me? Brrrrr! It’s obviously an opt-in situation, and people are looking for ways to monetize Twitter, but this seems like an intrusive way of doing it. Almost … unpolite? Thanks for following me, and by the way, there’s an ad for you inserted by someone on my behalf.

One day YOUR tweets could look like this:

1) just attending the @chrisbrogan webinar 2) thx for the referral, retweeting 3) nice link to top 10 social media fallacies 4) social media expert in Alabama, buy one social media network get one free! 5) @jowyang leaving the stage to great applause, nice conference

So, did you notice 4) slipped in there? Magpie — the company offering the service — says that “You’ll only get magpie-tweets that match the topics you’re twittering about.” I’m assuming they have an algorithm of some kind similar to Google AdWords that tracks certain words and matches the ads?

Referring to your followers, Magpie says: “If they’re annoyed by the magpie-tweets, they might unfollow you and you might earn less.” I am going to monitor what’s being said about all this. [At the time of writing, it seems pretty favourable actually.]

Horses for courses, as they say, but my followers won’t be getting ads from me.

[Update: Here’s Jan Schulz-Hofen’s website if you have questions about Magpie.]

[Update #2: I asked Schulz-Hofen’s thoughts about the ethics of pushing ads — his comments are below.]

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Business, GCI Canada, Industry News, Personal Thoughts, Social Media, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The Scariest Thing I’ve Seen All Halloween!”

  1. Jan Schulz-Hofen Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    Hi John,

    thank you for writing about Magpie and thanks for the invitation to comment on your post.

    We at Magpie totally understand that ads in tweets might not be for everyone. As you mention, it is an optional service that you actively have to sign up for.

    We believe that it should be in a twitterer’s hands to choose whether or not to use Magpie. Twitterers are offering a service to their followers: they’re telling them what they are doing, or maybe what they just found out on the Web, or what might be the latest news. Just think of Robert Scoble or Michael Arrington. These guys are breaking news for us on Twitter every day.

    Magpie gives people like them a chance to monetize their timeline and to finally get paid for what they’re offering. It’s just like AdWords from Google: if you’re offering a web site for free, you’re putting a lot of work into it. You might want something to pay your bills at the end of the day.

    We believe that each twitterer will come to terms with her followers a some point. You don’t want to loose your followers, so you will listen to them. On Magpie you can stop ads at any time; you can also choose at which rate ads are twittered and there’s more to come to empower the twitterer to be in control.

    If you or your readers have further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. We at Magpie believe in 100% transparency. We value every user and every opinion.

    Best regards,

    Jan Schulz-Hofen
    CEO Magpie & Friends Ltd.

  2. GCI Canada Staff Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 8:47 pm

    Quick reply, thanks Jan.

    ~ JC.

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