I’m sitting here asking myself why a famous radio personality from England would take the time to tell a small company from the US to “Fuck Off” over a promoted tweet on Twitter.
It wasn’t a particularly remarkable Tweet to begin with
First off, it’s funny (and a tad embarrassing because we are still figuring out Twitter Ads) that the tweet getting promoted links to an article in the online version of Inc. Magazine. A darn fine article about how “Your Story Is Your Marketing Strategy.” I wanted to figure out who this Danny Baker character was, so I did a little research. He’s got a fairly interesting story of his own so I’m curious why the article didn’t resonate with him to some extent. Perhaps he didn’t take the time to click on the link and read it.
But your Twitter subscription costs so much…
Next, I thought maybe it’s the promoted tweets aspect of the whole experience. You know how we all pay so much for our Twitter accounts…oh wait, that can’t be it. Twitter, like over the air radio is basically free for us end-users. That means the revenue to support the Twitter corporation has to come from somewhere. Yes, Danny, Twitter is a corporation unlike little old ColorMetrix which is just an LLC or in English terms a Partnership. That revenue comes from advertising like the promoted tweet from ColorMetrix that was “bust into” your timeline by Twitter.
There is no such thing as a free Tweet
I get a little angry when I hear people bitching and moaning about Twitter or Facebook for that matter which are essentially free services for us endusers. The key point being for endusers. Twitter and Facebook are corporations, with payrolls to pay and server farms to maintain. I find it even more interesting that a guy who makes his living on the radio (which I assume is supported by ads in the UK as well) would attack Twitter’s advertising model.
At the end of the day, I decided Danny was just having a bad day so I thought I’d send a *smile* his way. 🙂
HAHAHA!Â
I guess this is where not always being on social every second of every day comes in handy. I have seen a few promoted tweets/posts in my timelines, but you know what, just like the conversations that I have no interest in or that don’t pertain to me, I kinda blank them out. Not that I want to encourage facebook, but the adds on the sidebars actually stand out to me more. I still don’t click on them, but, they stand out more.
Good post Jim
I see promoted tweets every day. Most I just ignore but every now and then one catches my interest. (Oh, and the secret is they are working to help our campaign, but that is another blog post entirely).
I’m sure it was alarming to see THAT in your feed. Still, I think you were smart not to take this stranger’s moment of frustration too seriously.
This is really so much more about how we all feel about promoted tweets. And if we don’t like those and Facebook ads are we all ready to pony up subscription fees so they can keep these services going….I think not.
If he got so upset over a promoted tweet, I wonder how he handles tailgaters in rush hour. Love the way you handled it.
*bows* Momma always told me take the high road…of course she’d be none to pleased about the f-bomb in the title but hey I wanted to accurately quote Mr. Baker.
So lame… but totally expected in the faceless world of social media. People feel because they can hide behind their hootsutie, tweetdeck and iphones and say whatever they want.
Or he’s a “shock jock” and it’s just his public persona. After I got over the shock I found it funny how he just fired without doing research. And it exposes the need for more discussion about a based revenue models to support free services. He lashed out at us for using Twitter Ad that support the sustainability of the service.
Should I just start torching him to all my followers?? 🙂
You know it is interesting I see this guy and he’s got about as many followers as @tommytrc:disqus but in my discussions with Tommy, he tells me how he’d miss a ton of tweets without lists because his feed updates way to quickly to stay on top of it. This tells me one of two things about Danny.. Either he’s got incredible luck to have actually seen your tweet or he is looking for promoted tweets to comment on because it make him feel better about something.  Obviously he knows zero about your business and even less about promoted tweets in Twitter. In my opinion he’s probably not worth the space of this post nor this comment but I will say the word idiot comes to mind when I read his comments…
Figure at 140K followers he probably gets about 20% spam in his meaning this should be the least of his concerns.
Tim, I don’t think Danny does follow back at the same level Tommy does, but regardless the rest of your observations are right. It’s like he looks for promoted tweets so he can vent frustration or something. Weird.