I realized I haven’t posted much about my *fascinating* industry lately, but this came up in the industry gossip:

Twitter To Add A Business Model?

My belief? It’s companies getting excited about 2nd Life all over again. Even if they were to monetize it, there is very little point to Twitter to begin with. Oh, I’m a user, and it’s neat to be able to post to it from my phone, but I still firmly believe that advertising via Twitter is a mediocre idea at best.

Why? Because old-skool marketers are thinking about numbers. Quantity, not quality. Sure, if someone links you to something they know you might think is cool, that’s something different than an incoming deluge of bland ads that have little to do with you. And moreover, what makes ad-sellers think that because they purchase an account at $1,000.00 for 1000 followers that they will keep those followers once they start pushing ads? Slim to none. It’s easy to unsubscribe, and in that case, it kills the point of you purchasing a huge Twitter account.

Exception: If accounts take on some kind of personality that matches with the brand, something that communicates brand news in a real human way, it might work. Might.

After all, I would pay more attention to and appreciate a Twitter post that reads:

Than this:

(Oh, come on, you know this will eventually happen. NO ONE is immune to penis enlargement spam.)

However, this should not prevent users from building up profiles for larger brands to snatch up at a high cost later on.

Hey, 20somethings, what do you say we do our homework, build a giant network, and cash out soon?