Does Being a Magpie Mean Being a Spammer?
Who doesn’t want to convert their tweets into bling bling? Yeah! I just get to keep doing what I normally do and signing up for this little service will convert my musings into cold hard cash. Woo hoo! Where do I sign up? I want to be a Magpie!
You may want to give this a little more consideration.
Yes, I know that there are very few Web properties that can survive without a revenue model so it is somewhat inevitable that we will all one day be staring at ads while we use Twitter. I’m not resistant to that concept.
What I am resistant to is the transformation of consumer or peer content into advertising. I understand that consumers are powering behavioral targeted advertising all the time but, if you truly view this kind of technology as conversational, this approach to monetizing social media is roughly the same as if your friend uncontrollably said “buy a Toyota!” every five minutes while you were discussing cars.
Also, as much as Magpie’s flow charts show cute little businesses like organic bakeries and “Suzie’s Veggie Shop,” these services will eventually be bought by media agencies that aren’t exactly famous for protecting the reputation of their advocates. Do you really want advertisers controlling the messages you’re sending out online? Do you want to risk that a future employer will know the difference between a racy ad embedded in your tweet and the information you voluntarily control?
Unfortunately, Magpie doesn’t address these concerns in their FAQ. They tell you to “keep your followers happy and don’t risk annoying them with too many magpie-tweets” but they don’t really address what is means to turn your microblog into an ad.
Twitter asks the simple question “what are you doing?” If Magpie is answering that for you with an ad then I think you’re missing the point.
