Digital media is all a big con. Like the old days when a few dodgy metatags inside HTML could push users towards away from websites they were looking for, to paid search and to keywords, writing online copy is just a succession of tricks.
Even more recent channels such as Twitter and Facebook are beginning to be compromised. Any form of meritocracy in digital media is being continually usurped by marketing mountebanks and commercial charlatans who don’t give a f*ck about content, they just care about visibility.
So this week’s announcement that Twitter will place paid-for tweets in the middle of users’ Twitter streams comes as no surprise. Furthermore, the company wants to make these tweets ‘sticky’ so they say at the top of the page, almost magnetically.
For those who love Twitter and regard their news feeds as sacred channels of communication they have built up, this is like a Super Bowl ad subliminally springing up during a climatic scene of a quality BBC drama.
But potential Twitter advertisers don’t give a daffy duck about this because they know, deep down. that once the initial protests die down, people will accept this. It’s all about addiction.
Mobile phone operators could probably do what they liked if it meant that people were deprived of their mobile phones by refusing to do what they say. Imagine that, it would be worse than being banned from driving; utter terror at being excluded.
So while I scroll down my blessed Twitter feed that tells me about the world, about the wondrous nuggets of wisdom, about football, about music, about books, about nights out, in the next two months I will come across a promoted tweet about a soft drink or a deoderant and I will shrug.
I will shrug, I know I can’t beat it, I know its magnetic stickiness will brainwash me in the same way that flashing banners ads used to blind me. Another part of me will wither.
Then I will write about it on my non-SEO-optimised website and nobody will probably read it and then I will turn into a promoted tweet and then I will die with promoted tweets coming out of my big, bored, non-meritocratic arse. Happy days…
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
