This is, in fact, nothing new in the world of social media. Friendster, MySpace and Facebook have also experience a certain degree of “abuse” throughout their lifespan. In other case, community-generated content sites, such as Blogger, Wikipedia and Google Knol, the same thing has already happened to them.
How Twitter evolves into something… better?
Twitter, originally intended as a microblogging platform where you can say (or tweet) whatever you want in 140 characters or less, has becoming a classified ad site (a lucrative one, at least for Twitter members.)
Internet and affiliate marketers do their best to find a way to get more followers and get their pitches reach to as many prospects as possible.
With the help of third-party tools, such as FutureTweets and something similar, you can even automate your tweets in such a way that you are selling 24/7 to your prospects.
Not only online marketers, spammers use Twitter for, what else, find more followers and promote almost everything that the end result is more money for the spammers. Twitters team has anti-spam system in place, but it is only effective at thwarting a wave of spam, one ripple at a time.
But I guess spammers are social media’s friend in disguise. From my observation, spammers do help social media grow in some ways. They do update a lot, they do grow their network well, and they do try to reach as many “prospects” as possible.
Just to clarify, not all spammers are scammers. They are totally different. Scammers are definitely those that you and I should run away from. Spammers, in the other hand, have their own appeal by presenting something that you and I might actually interested in.
Twitter as an advertising space
I once read a comment by a Twitter member (I’m sorry, I forgot what’s his Twitter user name) – He said that Twitter is a place where everybody is posting messages but reading none. A bit ironic, but it’s true to a certain extent – Many, if not most, Twitter members update a lot but reply or respond a little.
I observe and see a pattern that more and more tweets on Twitter are either selling something (either their own products or affiliated products) or referring to news content that happen to be related with the account owners (their own blog posts, press releases, etc.)
That being said, no matter what Twitter will become in the future, I believe that Twitter deserves a credit for attracting so many people, including experts, business owners, celebrities, marketers, public figures (and spammers.) To say the least, I enjoy this web 2.0 classified ad site with a hint of chit chat with celebs and experts – No sarcasm intended.
Twitter for make money online purpose
Some do make a nice amount of money using Twitter (something I am observing right now – This is the time to jump into the bandwagon :D) and some others build a community and network – I believe business owners have to use Twitter to enhance their business branding and marketing campaign.
Here’s the selling success story – I have done affiliate marketing past 2 months, initially to test the money making power of Twitter that many have talked about. Here’s the fact: I make more affiliate sales on Twitter than I do on-site – Yes, even Noobpreneur.com make more money off-site than on-site. I believe Twitter is powerful, and today is just a beginning.
Ivan Widjaya
How about following Noobpreneur.com or my personal Twitter account? :D