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Do you care what it is exactly I want you to tweet? It’s not porn, it’s not racist or anything else offensive to your next door neighbor. What is it then? I want you to tweet a marketing message that has been disguised to appear genuinely from you. I’ll give you $250 for pressing a button! So? Will you do it?

Tempting – isn’t it? Do you think average joe with 10,000 twitter followers will find it tempting? Absolutely.

Full disclosure? I am a marketing and advertising type.  (but not one you can easily cookie cut by any means.) How do I feel about this? Bah! Not impressed. Why? Several reasons that I’ve attempted to outline below – what will this mean to our networks, relationships with friends and perception of social anything a year from now? Two years from now? I appreciate there are the full disclosure type companies but I tend to think they’ll be in the minority… most companies will work hard to hide <seed> their marketing messages as genuine tweets from mates. I can’t help but think that this is dodgy space.. why?

#1 – It’s not honest. Granted it could be argued that it is the ‘friend’ who is tweeting his love of said brand that is being the dishonest one. Regardless – when a brand is exposed in this space as acting in a way other than honest and authentic – they are in for one helluva run. The Nissan Cube, Habitat and the classic Dell brand can all testify to this harsh reality.

#2 – it’s not the way Social Media (SoMe) is done. It is a “Get Social Quick” scheme and for those of us who’ve earned our stripes know this does not work. There is no long term growth achieved. I’d even argue that this takes you one step forward and three steps back.

#3 – smells like MLM. Network Marketing. Pyramid. Whatever you want to call it. Now everybody is a mark. Now every twitter list is a dollar sign. Now every potential twitter account that befriends you is actually a robot looking to build a list to benefit from Black Hat Tweets! (That’s what I’m calling it as it feels a lot like Black Hat SEO) And when said person discovers that they are being considered a mark or seen as a dollar sign, what do they do? They revolt. (or bolt in the opposite direction)

#4 – it exploits a space that prides itself on trusting the recommendations of others. Hmmm. I wonder how long this will last. AC Neilsen can be quoted as saying- 78% of people trust what their network recommend to them.

#5-  it is setting a brand up for a beating. When exposed to be paying for fake recommendations how do you think said brand will be received by the social space? If the brand is big enough and the story is outrageous enough there will be one helluva a job waiting for some PR firm. (Hopefully a PR firm who appreciates that we’ve evolved and social media is no longer a fad)

What do you think? Am I over thinking this? Is there a place for this type of evil? HAH!

Nov 22nd by Shannon