Yesterday I spent the day at TechCrunch’s ‘Real Time Crunch-up’. This despite having no idea what a ‘Crunch-up’ actually is.
The important thing is that Erick had asked me to help moderate his panel about marketing within ‘real-time streams’, which is a subject close to my heart. So close in fact, that had he asked me to help moderate a panel about child rape and its place in the public school system I couldn’t have been keener to weigh in.
I’ll get back to my own contribution in a moment, but first, as a courtesy to my paymasters, I should probably relate a few of my ‘key learnings’ from the event.
1) There is such a thing as a ‘key learning’, a phrase which I heard at least three times during the day, and which I gather is what an ‘opinion’ becomes when spoken by an idiot.
2) Gabe Rivera from TechMeme loves bookmarks. How else to explain his glee when he discovered that each of the four million free copies of Marc Benioff’s ‘Salesforce.com Playbook‘ scattered about the conference contained a little strip of cardboard sponsored by Amazon. “Cool. I can use these for my other books,” he exclaimed, removing each bookmark and pocketing it before carefully placing the books back on the table.
3) Even with a back-cover quote from Neil Young, you apparently can’t give away Marc Benioff’s ‘Salesforce.com Playbook‘. At the start of the day, there were towering piles of the thing on every surface – one free for every attendee. By the end of the day: towering piles of the thing on every surface, ready to be returned to the publisher. Perhaps Benioff should have taken a leaf out of his own playbook: Play #42 reads “Don’t Dis Your Product With A Discount”, with Benioff explaining that “I wouldn’t even give my own grandmother a discount.” Yet apparently he wouldn’t think twice about giving the whole book away to a room full of the only people who are likely to actually buy the thing. (My book didn’t win its Congressional Medal Of Honor by being given away free).
4) At TechCrunch conferences, even the food is patriotic. After the American flag next to the judges table debacle at TechCrunch50, I was worried that Arrington might shy away from overt displays of Americanness at future events. Not so – inside the meal box provided to each attendee was a disposable handwipe, packaged inside a little stars and stripes pouch. To reaffirm my love of this country, I stuck one of the pouches to the front of the podium on the stage.
5) Dogs frighten room service waiters, but love Gabe Rivera from Techmeme.
And so to my panel – and to be honest, I was a little anxious at the thought of it given that my fellow participants were Erick and five marketing experts – Sean Rad of Ad.ly, Ryan Amos of DailyBooth, Jesse Engle of CoTweet, Philip Nelson of NewTek and Robin Bechtel who acts as ‘digital agent’ to Britney Spears amongst others.
Erick was on my side, of course, but even he and I have a checkered history, due in large part to the fact that I keep finding excuses to bring up his Last.fm story. Keen to smooth things over beforehand, I went via CBS’s San Francisco HQ on my way to the conference and picked up a Last.fm tshirt for him. You know, as a peace offering. He didn’t wear it, but I know he appreciated the gesture. (“You fucker,” he said, which I gather is New York for “thank you.”)
Even with Erick placated, I was still terrified by the marketers. I’m an editorial person and so these are not My People – in fact I’m obliged to close my ears whenever the subject of monetizing my words is raised. What I do is Good and Pure; what they do is Bad and Dirty.
Worse still, these weren’t even the usual kind of marketers – people who sell banners and display ads and the like – but rather a new breed who made their living by trying to slip commercial messages into our every day interactions. Take Bechtel – her most recent professional triumph was convincing a gaggle of Perez’ Hilton’s celebrity friends – Lady Gaga, Katy Perry et al – to promote a new Warner recording artist by Tweeting the words “Who is Sliimy?” to their armies of followers. Sure enough, within a few hours, the question made it to the top of the trending topics list, presumably resulting in a whole load of record sales for Sliimy. To Bechtel this is a great result, whereas to my mind the idea of one Warner artist whoring and shilling for another that they hadn’t even heard of is just about the most hideous abuse of fandom since Jordy Chandler.
(Sliimy, by the way, is pronounced ‘Slimmy’ rather than the more appropriate ‘Slimy’. Also, he’s French, famous, and entirely irrelevant to the wider digital conversation. I expect he’ll be at Le Web.)
And then there was Ad.ly’s Sean Rad. If you’re not familiar with Ad.ly’s product, then put a pencil between your teeth and read this profile of them by the NYT’s Brad Stone. I quote… “Tuesday was another typical day for John Chow, blogger and Internet entrepreneur in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Chow treated his 50,000 Twitter followers to a photograph of his lunch (barbecued chicken and French fries), discussed the weather in Vancouver and linked to a new post on his Internet business blog. Then he earned $200 by telling his fans where they could buy M&M’s with customized faces, messages and colors.”
Get thee behind me, Ad.ly.
During the panel, Rad explained more about his business and his view that Twitter streams should be seen as ‘real pieces of content’ that should therefore be ‘monetized’. In response to Erick’s suggestion that people might not welcome this ‘monetization’ of their conversations, he responded that many of the company’s advertitweets included an appeal for followers to ‘please retweet’ the ads posted in their friends’ streams. According to Rad, thousands of people did precisely that, proving that people were embracing the ads. I politely disagreed, pointing out that people – by and large – are fucking idiots who will retweet anything if you tell them to. A couple of weeks ago, as a comment against the ridiculousness of those who beg their followers to ‘please RT’ the most mundane of messages, I twittered the message “I’m going for lunch. Please RT!“
And yet, despite the jovial back-and-forth – at one point I accidentally called Rad a dick – we actually managed to end the session with something approaching a consensus. The trigger for this consensus was Erick inviting Robert Scoble to come on stage and explain his vision of the future of monetized twittering.
Scooby’s vision is the ‘Super Tweet‘, a taggable, more contextual tweet that would enable advertisers to serve commercial messages based on what people were already talking about. Critically, these messages would appear in a separate panel in the Twitter client, rather than invading the stream itself. It’s a vision that seemed at odds with that of Twitter’s COO Dick Costollo who, speaking earlier in the conference, hinted that the company’s upcoming ad strategy might blur the old church and state lines. “We want to do something that’s organic and in the flow of the way people already use Twitter” he said, “and not Here’s the tweets and here are the ads.’”
Scoble argued that “you can display ads in the Twitter client but you don’t fuck with editorial” – and as such his idea seemed totally fine to me – why shouldn’t Starbucks deliver ads to people who tweet about going for coffee, as long as those ads appear in a clearly demarked window? And, hell, why not go one stage further: perhaps some of that revenue could get kicked back to the people making the tweets – the “content creators”? That would certainly be better than sponsored tweets.
It’s a testament to Scoble’s vision, and the marketers’ passion that I left the stage agreeing that, even if we disagree on format – there was nothing inherently wrong with monetizing the Twitter stream through targeted advertising. To his credit, Rad even offered to share with me some of their raw numbers so I could see how people interacted with the various commercial messages generated through Ad.ly.
I’d say my feeling of agreement lasted about ten minutes before it was replaced with one of searing outrage.
What the hell was I thinking? Nothing wrong with monetizing the Twitter stream through targeted advertising? There’s everything wrong with it. And here’s why…
A tweet isn’t a “piece of content”. It isn’t editorial. No matter whether we’re talking about what we’re having for lunch or suggesting a new movie or sharing a piece of news, what we’re really doing is having a good old-fashioned conversation. Following people on Twitter is like organising the world’s largest cocktail party – we’ve decided whose opinions we trust, and we’ve invited them to come into our homes and talk to us about things they are genuinely interested in. The moment people start screwing around with that principle, the whole system collapses.
Just look at the conceptual abortion that is the new retweet functionality: everyone in their right mind hates it, but few of us can quite explain why. Let me try. When someone retweeted under the old system, it was the equivalent of standing at the cocktail party and saying to our friends “oh, Dave said something interesting the other day…” and then going on to quote Dave, along with our own comments on what Dave had to say. The quoting of Dave was contextual and appropriate.
By contrast, the new retweet function is the equivalent of us snapping our fingers and making Dave himself suddenly appear in the middle of the party. And, then, without so much as an introduction, Dave starts talking. No context, no invitation – just some crazy dude called Dave talking at us, at our own party.
Adding sponsored tweets will have an even more poisonous effect on the party. There we are, listening to a friend talking about the weather or sports and suddenly – boom – he’s trying to sell us a personalised pack of M&Ms. It doesn’t matter if he explains that he’s been paid by the company to promote their products – the fact is, there’s some dickhead at a party trying to sell us M&Ms. He’s even more unwelcome than Dave.
One of the most popular ideas amongst social marketers is the idea that we will listen to commercial endorsements from our friends because we trust them. Thus, by putting brands into our friends’ mouths, we will somehow trust those brands more by extension. Not for the first time, the marketers have got it backwards. The reason we trust our friends so strongly is precisely because we know that their opinions are not commercially motivated. The moment that ceases to be the case – or we even suspect that it has ceased to be the case – the bond of trust between friends is destroyed. The cocktail party is ruined, society crumbles, the apes take over the world.
Separating the ads from the conversation might be a less egregious solution but it doesn’t alter the fact that our words are triggering the appearance of commercial messages on the walls of a party. Inevitably marketers will try to further affect these messages by paying commission to popular tweeters, and the less principled of our friends will sign up to whichever ad networks provide the best incentives for monetizing their updates. From then on they’ll be constantly wondering if there’s a way to wedge in a brand, or a product that could bring them a few cents into their tweets. Even if they think they’re just making pocket money from the things they’d talk about anyway, their conversations will become inevitably altered by the presence of commercial influences.
Meantime, the anti-commercial-minded amongst us will resist this new development by avoiding using certain brand names in our conversations, knowing that they are simply giving an excuse for those brands to make money from our friends. Instead of Starbucks and McDonalds, we’ll be sure to criticize S*arbucks and McD%nalds so as to deprive them of the click-throughs. And yet by the simple conscious act of avoiding commercial pressures, we’re forced to consider them – and so the spontaneity and purity of the conversation is destroyed. Either way, the cocktail party is ruined, society crumbles, the apes take over the world.
Our blogs are already affiliated-linked up to the eyeballs, our TV shows are product-placed to hell, radio has succumbed to payola, even our schools are brought to you by the letters COCA COL and A. Human conversation is the last area of communication to hold out against the relentless march of commercialisation and it’s our duty, as humans, to make sure it stays that way. So, screw consensus. And shame on me for starting to lean towards it yesterday. Give me ad-free conversation, or give me death.
(Please retweet.)
Love the Dave analogy.
Yeah, I agree. The Dave analogy summed up the RT mess really well.
When you said “I politely disagreed, pointing out that people – by and large – are fucking idiots who will retweet anything if you tell them to.” I couldn’t help but think that any one who tweets was a fucking idiot.
I guess you follow @CERN on Twitter, as I do.
Yes, and even more idiotic, is a lush of a Hunter Thompson wannabe trying to give insight on the topic of tech monitization. Death to twitter.
if it were to actually happen you would think advertiser’s would find out really quick what happens when friends violate the implicit advertising-free trust.
even the article about ad.ly talks about people unfollowing friends that advertise at them.
You are the most retarded writer ever, period.
You are the most retarded commenter ever, period.
Dudes, remember that when humor and anti-humor collide the result is definitely no laughing matter.
The vast reaches of internet comment sections are akin to an enormous vacuum: a Dirac Sea of antihumor.
The giant cocktail party that is Twitter is already intolerable
so, what’s the point?
You do realize that bandwidth costs money and that employees at companies like Twitter need salaries in order to pay the rent, don’t you? It’s fine to critique sponsorships (and I agree with many of your Utopian thoughts) but eventually revenue minus expenses must equal a positive number. Please propose a solution…
No solution needed. The advertising will kill the tweets and as such profits will be elusive. The investors will scurry away and look for some other stupid venture to invest the employees retirement fund in.
The best way to integrate business into the discussion is to hold that discussion at the hyper-local level.
If the guy running the sandwich shop across the street, and the accountant in the apartment three doors down participate in a discussion about the effects of a new city ordinance on graffiti, then that’s an appropriate inclusion of a business voice. If they also weigh in on other discussions taking place in the neighborhood, then they are one of the neighbors like everybody else. If they seem like nice folks, I might buy something from them.
Conversational marketing and permission marketing rolled into one. Some celebrity selling M&Ms is not my neighbor and does not have my permission to pitch me.
Terrible post as usual Paul, keep it up.
You know, the solution to all this nonsense is simple. People should tweet from personal accounts, everyone should unfollow the business accounts, and block the “social media guru consultant” fuckheads.
There are ways for Twitter to keep the doors open without encouraging people to sell out their friends.
Paul,
probably your best column to date. Even so, one can argue if Twitter is a broadcasting tool, an information channel, a conversation platform or all of it together; separating ads from tweets is in my opinion the better idea.
Let’s have a look at Google for an example that works, even so this is not 100% comparable. At Google you have paid sponsored links next to the content, either in the search or in web apps like Gmail. This is how i see a Twitter paid ads can work.
If you want to reach users, you pay, you ad won’t pollute the conversation. Everyone is happy.
Now, Google also allows you to use some clever SEO to position your content higher in the search results. To a certain extend, if you are clever, you can hack Google a bit and get the chance of monetization without paying for ad words.
I would compare this to someone who is a large social influencer on Twitter. These influencers can use their network, their large number of followers and their social status on Twitter to monetize on their blogs, campaigns or products, without the need to pay for ads.
I’ve decided to start inserting ads into my spoken conversation with real people in person to earn a little extra money as well. Seems harmless to me?!
Nice analysis – so will all of the party goers be willing to pay Twitter for the price of admission thus keeping the conversation without commercial taint. Perhaps they just host the party as a not-for-profit. It has worked well for NPR.
That might be one good way to go, if unlikely for Twitter itself (might work for a similar platform if Twitter goes the wrong way and turns itself into facebook). Another might be to monetize the metadata by selling reports to industries that want to see it, plot trends, track reputations, whatever. I think it will be a damn shame, though, if Twitter jumps off the ride too soon and misses the chance to help define an ad-less web. Surely there can be an internet devoid of advertising.
yawn. didn’t get past the frst two paragraphs.
All i wanted was NSFW ad
.sadface.
I think the article presents a good point (if not a bit cynically). However, I would have an easier time believing you were a purist if it weren’t for the long list of advertisements down the right-hand side of my screen.
I agree that everything is so over-commercialized but I don’t think we can blame that on marketers. Maybe years ago before the internet when it was just radio, tv, and print ads. But now, every person standing on the soap box of their blog is trying to monetize by including ads that their 2 followers might click on. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.
Like I said, I agree with the main point. But I’m with Mark, propose a solution…otherwise you’re doing the very thing you’re criticizing (again, please note the long list of ads on the right-hand side of the screen).
I think you need to read the post again. Paul isn’t saying advertising is wrong, but that putting words in peoples mouths is.
If the words trigger the adverts, and the ads are clearly labelled as such, it’s all gravy.
If the ads trigger the words (ie sponsored tweets), then we’re in trouble. Read the Dave analogy again and imagine that actually happening.
The solution is proper contextual advertising akin to the Google approach.
He can’t do anything about the ads here, it’s not his website. But if you go to his blog you’ll see he doesn’t have any ads.
Interesting stuff, Paul…
I’m still waiting to hear back from the Twitter crew about how we could bolt a DOY ad system alongside the ‘editorial’ and ensure that the twain continued to never meet…
http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=321
I also sense a value to be had in lists; rewarding the ‘editors’ for their time is sifting out the flotsam and jetsam…
http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=327
best etc
I’ll the take the commentary seriously when TechCrunch drops advertising and sponsorship.
Well… you obviously didn’t read it through or just don’t understand it. Either way, your statement is mistaken.
I don’t mind the sponsored tweets in my timeline as long as the person is sharing other ‘useful’ information with me.
You write well, you’re funny, and I always enjoy watching someone poke marketing gurus with barbed objects. I’ll be back.
I concur!
Witty, on point, edgy.
Or… you can just stop using Twitter…. presto, no ads!
If without ads Twitter is a “party” then I’ll have a cigarette outside on the curb with the bums, thank you. Twitter with ads? More of the same.
All we’re talking about here is ads by the people who usually produce ads. Corporations, etc. Their ads are marginally more offensive than the homegrown “read my blog” ads, but frankly it’s a tiresome distinction.
Twitter *is* ads? It’s spam for everyone. There’s very little else to it. Why shouldn’t corporations get to spam everyone too?
P.S. Before some mentions the Iranian revolution… Twitter didn’t actually make that happen, because actually there wasn’t one — everyone’s in jail and the mullahs are testing nukes. You might want to check out the real news, the stuff that doesn’t make it to Twitter, which no-one follows even if it does. You can find that stuff on things called “web sites” that have this cool feature that allows them to be longer than 100 characters and a bit.ly link.
And websites update in realtime too!
Everyone who froths about “realtime” forgets that, and forgets RSS too, and forgets about forums, and forgets about Skype and IM in general, and the fact that who gives a shit about “public” realtime 99% of the time and the other 1% of the time is just breaking news fodder that isn’t actually necessary to 99.9999999% of the population. Realtime has value when it’s data that’s close to you. There is no “wisdom of the crowd” – the online crowd is as dumb as a bag of bricks, as trending topics testify.
Spot on, Andrew! I’ll just leave this here: http://identi.ca/
Is Carr deliberately misspelling ‘monetizing’ in multiple places?
no, he’s just British.
this debate is not new: renaissance artists had patrons; wayne and garth had pizza hut. technology gives us the ability to separate content from advertising (see: gmail), but the only thing that can actually keep your personal “stream” (in the general sense) free from commercial plugs is a generous dose of cynicism about people’s motivations and zero tolerance for any “friend” who attempts to profit off of your trust.
Obligatory embed:
I can understand your aversion, Paul. If Twitter becomes spammy it’s bad for everybody. Advertising in-stream has got to be as authentic and brand conscious as possible.
Surely you know that people criticized bloggers when banners went up. They criticized Scoble when he was “sponsored” as a human being. They criticize affiliate ads. Hell, they even want TV to be commercial free but they also want it to be commercially free. This is an oxymoron.
Twitter streams are conversations, true. But they are also filled with marketing messages such as links back to blog sites that make money by driving eyeballs there and monetized through … ads!
Monetizing in-stream has got to be clearly marked as such so that it doesn’t blur the lines between church and state. Ad.ly is working hard to ensure this.
I discuss this topic more fully on my blog: http://grp.vc/ANg
If Twitter becomes spammy? WTF?
LOL. so true. Tip of the hat to facebook for realizing that when the public-stream fad is gone and the celebrities go back to the telly, people go back to their friends.
And wag of the finger to Paul Carr for shifting views
“Advertising in-stream has got to be as authentic and brand conscious as possible.”
But Mark, you can’t even write a comment that doesn’t make people want to beat you to death with your own lexicon. What hope for your ads?
Mark you forgot to disclose this sponsored comment with the proper #imaninvestor disclosure.
+1
I can see this is all going to get messy…
Mark is one of the most transparent VCs in the business. Yes, he’s gunning for his boys, but that’s because he believes in the underlying thesis.
Who wouldn’t want a VC that sticks up for you like this?
Yes, sorry. I disclose it in my post but realize it’s not in my comments. Not intentional. Was rushing to comment before racing out the door to my brother’s wedding!
Ad people and the rest of us truly live on separate planets. Let me explain why:
“Advertising in-stream has got to be as authentic and brand conscious as possible.”
Actually, the whole point of the article was that advertising in-stream is an abomination that should never see the light of day. No way to finesse around that.
“Hell, they even want TV to be commercial free but they also want it to be commercially free.”
As someone who doesn’t have a TV, only listens to NPR, and uses Adblock in my browser, I see no problem with this.
“This is an oxymoron.”
An oxymoron would be something like bureaucratic efficiency. Commercial free television is not only conceivable, but exists.
“Twitter streams are conversations, true. But they are also filled with marketing messages such as links back to blog sites…”
Maybe your tweets to your friends “Top 5 SEO tips” blog is a marketing message. The rest of us share informative links with no financial incentive whatsoever. I’ll pause here for you to digest that statement.
Give my congrats to your brother. No ill will intended, but you do realize that advertisers and the rest of us are enemies. We want opposite things, no matter how you try to finesse it or reframe the issue, you want to put things in my stream that I don’t want there. You’re hoping that there are some people I’ll still follow even if they’re a little annoying. You’re wrong, because I don’t follow the people you do.
If I followed advertising people and those who constantly chattered about monetizing this and mindshare that, I’d probably think the way you do. I don’t follow those people. I follow scientists and engineers and librarians and philosophers and other interesting people. These people don’t want a dime from their tweets and they’ll keep doing it because they like to trade ideas. Ideas are their currency. The value of an academic is in their ideas. If they promote ideas that aren’t theirs, they are instantly bankrupt. You couldn’t pay them enough to sponsor their tweets.
Talk about taking your time getting to the point.
Here is another example of what it will feel like If ads are injected into twitter it will start to feel like the product placement in the Truman Show:
Twitter is not a place for conversation.
Not yet. I am still waiting for a threaded conversation tool for Twitter.
Fairly sure that used to exist – it was called Pownce…
“…our words are triggering the appearance of commercial messages on the walls of a party.”
That’s going to happen someday. Imagine a TV at a bar actively listening to the conversations around it and displaying advertising based on keywords it hears. gmail does it already, here it comes for twitter. Your phone calls will be interrupted soon enough.
Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you should. Advertising has no such moral ground.
+1
The best parts: “I’d say my feeling of agreement lasted about ten minutes before it was replaced with one of searing outrage.
What the hell was I thinking? Nothing wrong with monitizing the Twitter stream though targeted advertising? There’s everything wrong with it…”
And: “A couple of weeks ago, as a comment against the ridiculousness of those who beg their followers to “please RT” the most mundane of messages, I twittered the message ‘I’m going for lunch. Please RT!’
People did.”
Enjoyed the article. Makes many good points with humour. Would ads that popout like the geo tag pin map be objectionable?
I agree that Twitter is “like organising the world’s largest cocktail party,” but it’s becoming more like a cocktail party at a trade show: too crowded, too commercial, too much self-interest and too much of a sense of obligation to participate for fear of missing something (or being missed). The authenticity of engagement that originally characterized Twitter seems to be going away quickly… and wasn’t authenticity one of the key values of social media?
Paul, the apes have already taken over the world.
+1
NERD
GEEK
Of course, as consumers of my delicious, Oprah approved diet pills ( http://www.paulcarr.com/book/) will know, Einstein’s Fourth Law states that for every internet comment, there is an XKCD comic to suit: http://xkcd.com/632/
More seriously, the editorial/advertisement wall is considered sacred by some, but fine to breach by others: we’re all used to product placement in film, and product placement in TV in the UK is on its way to being sanctioned. It is a line in the sand that some are prepared to cross, others less so.
But I agree with you that product placement in our conversations seem to be a step too far.
Perhaps that’s where the line is fuzzy: there are those on Twitter that we interact with who are our friends or are interesting people, with whom we have a conversation. Inserting adverts into those conversations would be poor.
But there are also people on Twitter who we follow where the conversation is non-existent – it is just a one-way delivery of content parcels. I’m especially thinking of celebrities, news sources, blogs, journalists etc. Would an advert in amongst that be any more heinous than an advert on that content provider’s blog or TV show?
I agree, and this was a very well written and enjoyable piece.
The ads may work for a while because we do trust our friends more. However if we know they are spewing forth these ads, that trust will decrease, and so will the effectiveness of the ads, and eventually the value we place on Twitter at all.
It is the equivalent of a friend trying to convince you to buy their new amway products everytime you see them. You feel awkward and eventually start avoiding that friend.
This article reminds me how I felt when AOL first unleashed their users onto my tidy little Internet.
While I was worried then about non-computer people getting online as I am now about pervasive advertising, I’m pretty sure it all works out for the best. The Internet is faster and better than ever before. More money and more people using new communications tools will allow them to be improved, and that will encourage the smart people to invent new ones.
Then we can go play with the thing for a while, and the cycle starts over again.