Great points. Here's a crazy idea. What if the ads were used to promote products and ideas that reflected their core values that served the interests of all. I'm not sure what that looks like but why can't advertising start by being socially responsible and then offer products relevant to those values. As with all things social, the 'come from' is critical. If platforms like promotional tweets consciously or unconsciously cause brands to default to their me first mentality, the social ecosystem will rightly reject them. Watching with interest what happens. Thanks again, Mahei.

I think if Twitter doesn't hit the mark on this, they'll create the world's largest discount coupon service. Twitter won't be directly responsible for this, it will be their advertisers and spammers who will try to take advantage of their platform.

The informed consumer is 'ad blind' so unless relevancy is high, the quality of the ad (in copy and offer) is high and the 'brand' itself has high trust, Twitter won't optimise their platform to the fullest. Just think how we treat Google ads. Same behaviour will apply to Twitter ads.

The question for brands is this:
- are your ads adding long-term value to your KPI's and bottom line?

If the ads are to simply used as a discount offering, brands are missing the boat and creating an ineffective spend. They also risk depleting the value of their brand. In a world of one to many and many to many, the ads have to be 'socialised'. See 'Groupon' as an example.

Will Twitter's ad platform work? sure it will. Can it be better? 800%!

Thanks Simon.

That said, I thought Shiv Singh's piece on “promoted tweets” was a fair and well articulated POV (leaning toward approval) on the platform, and a bit of an expansion on John Battelle's prediction of a “TweetSense” environment:

http://www.goingsocialnow.com/2010/04/twitter-l…

He raised one issue in particular I thought was resonant: the possibility that smaller brands could be priced out of the market.

Personally, I think the folks at Twitter will allow the market to vet this offering out in its own way and they will adapt. I also don't think they will be reliant upon this platform as a primary source of revenue — this may very likely be the result of investor pressure as opposed to long-term growth. In fact, with its utility as a conversation engine, I would expect them to revisit their 3rd party relationships and focus more on how data can be leveraged in unique ways and in a less intrusive monetization scheme.

Best,

Gunther
@goonth