Twitter Selling Out?

It doesn’t need to be said, but I’m going to say it anyway: cyberspace is the new hang-out for consumer audiences. It’s where everyone and their six hundred best friends go to get new information. It only makes sense that the advertisers follow. With Twitter, Facebook, and even MySpace (I know, I know, no one cool uses MySpace anymore. But we need to reach the losers too!), advertisers have this unchartered territory to explore. The only problem is: how?

Well, it doesn’t take much knowhow to realize that, since ordinary people are on all of these social networking sites, celebrities and opinion leaders will be too. It’s an often-lost concept, but celebrities are people. They have Facebooks and Twitters and MySpaces, just like the rest of the global population.

I guess it does seem like the next logical step, then, to solicit these celebs and opinion leaders to sponsor some media messages through their social networking accounts.

But now? I am conflicted. Not for the first time, my consumer self and my advertising self have hit a crossroads with one another. I am an advocate for preserving the spirit of Twitter and Facebook. They are spaces where people can share thoughts and pictures daily with the cyber world, where word of mouth explodes and people get to share ideas with other people. Yes. People. Not sponsors, not brand ambassadors. People.

And now, according to an article published in Ad Age, the advertising industry is trying to reach people in these spaces. Fair enough, considering we have every means to block out media messages whenever we want. But do they have the right to pay celebrities to tweet about certain products? Like a Twitter endorsement?

Legally, they can do whatever they want as long as the celebrity agrees, and especially if contracts are drawn up. It’s true that cyberspace is an extremely important space to cover in the ad world. But is it worth the compromise of the spirit of social media? How am I going to feel when I see John Mayer tweeting about some new energy drink and endlessly plugging it—just because he’s getting paid to say those things? Am I going to believe every witty joke he makes is still originally his?

You see, somehow getting into social media with your advertising message would be genius. It would begin to solve so many problems advertisers face today. But the problem is, people are skeptical of advertising in the first place. They have just truly started to accept that these celebrities really tweet their own tweets (although, honestly, how do we really know?). Is it worth compromising the integrity of Twitter for these celebs to get more cash (as if they didn’t have enough) and clutter up yet another space that has just opened up?

I don’t know. As I said before, figuring out a way to reach these Tweeters and Facebookers is crucial to the advertising process these days. But invading their Twitter-space and their Facebooks may not necessarily be the best way to go. Wouldn’t it give a brand more credibility if they reached out to the community in some unique way and got celebrities and opinion leaders to tweet and write about their brand products on their own will—free of charge? It would save the brand money, it would salvage what’s left of the advertising reputation, and it would preserve the integrity of social media. Well, at least that’s what we’re all hoping for. Fingers crossed.