Will Be-A-Mapgpie destroy Twitter’s credibility?

Advertisers are increasingly realising the power of social media like blogs and Twitter, and they want in on the action. Said Techcrunch yesterday:

“Like much-criticized PayPerPost for blogs, German/UK startup Be-A-Mapgpie will pay you to insert advertisements into your Twitter stream.

Advertisers pay on a cost-per-thousand-impression basis, and the ads are promised to be delivered to relevant audiences based on keywords. That means Be-A-Magpie will analyze the content of your Twitter messages to see if there is a match to particular advertisers.”

Be-A-Mapgpie does not disclose that a Tweet is an ad either, except for adding a #magpie hashtag into the post. To be fair, any explanation will eat into Twitter’s limited 140 character numbers and the possibilities of creative copy writing for the add.

I have already blogged about undisclosed payment for blog posts. It’s a no no. Social media directness, it’s emmediacy its connection to individuals gives it immense credibility. But undisclosed payment for endorsements can destroy social media’s credibility.

Of course all links inside Twitter have nofollow tags. So there’s no transfer of valuable Google Pagerank happening here (unlike with blogs that are great for transferring linkjuice). It’s pure advertising dressed up as recommendation.

Now ZuluZulu would be surprised if Twitter is not considering inserting ads into Twitter stream as an option to monetise their service. They are in a better position to differentiate between Tweets and ads than a third party, since they could do so in their interface presentation.

Be-A-Mapgpie, allows users to monetise their Tweet stream. How a Twitter user’s followers will view this remains to be seen.

The CEO of Be-A-Mapgpie Jan Schulz-Hofen, responded to some of the criticism on Techcrunch. It’s an interesting response so you can read it in full below. But it’s also interesting to note how tech companies as a matter of course are ready to respond directly in the blogosphere to comments about their companies. There’s another lesson for PR in that.

Jan Schulz-Hofen – November 24th, 2008 at 1:33 am PST

Dear Mike,

thanks for writing about Magpie and for sharing your feedback.

There has been quite some discussion about it lately with both negative and positive comments. We’ve tried to stay in the loop and we’ve learned a lot. After all, we’re still a very young company, but we’ve built a follower base of 600,000+ tweeps in only a month. So there are some people liking it.

Three major points have been addressed in yesterday’s update to Magpie:

- Pre-approval of ads. Tweeps can now pre-approve whether they want to air a specific magpie-tweet or not. Thus, users can move from mere ads to personal endorsements, if they like.

- Customizing the disclaimer. Mike, you also mention that ads weren’t clearly marked as such. We started by using #magpie as a disclaimer to both tell followers that this is not the Twitterer’s own tweet and to build our own brand a little. We’re allowing users now to use their own disclaimer like “ad” or “sponsored”. However, a lot of people (not referring to advertisers here) were asking to omit the disclaimer. We believe that, combined with pre-approval, this may as well be a way to go.

- Less frequent ads. We’ve always let people choose their tweet/ad-ratio but we didn’t allow really low amounts of ads. But as some people earn more than €50 (~ $63) per tweet, they’d be happy to have them come in less frequently. You can now choose to have as few ad 1 ad per 200 tweets.

I recognize that you don’t like the service as it is. I would love if you elaborated more on your objections, as this is the way we can improve the service.

In the end of the day, we believe that you don’t break your follower’s trust as you assumed before, Mike. Just as you, a lot of people are using Twitter to really provide a service to their followers. They’re breaking news, telling us what’s going on or are just making us laugh. As a blogger you can put up ads and be rewarded for what you do. As a Twitterer you should be as well, we think.

Again, I would love to hear more about why you don’t like Magpie and what we can do better!

Thanks again, kind regards,

Jan
CEO Magpie & Friends Ltd.