So, Dave Winer is the latest “tech celebrity” to attack Twitter’s controversial “suggested user” feature.
Financial value of Twitter’s suggested user list
People and companies on this list are gaining tens of thousands of new followers each week. In most cases, their Twitter profile includes a link to their website or blog, which usually carries advertising or sponsorships. Those clicks can be worth a small fortune!
Most of those on the list regularly link directly to their products, podcasts or posts and this massively increases their commercial reach.
The whole episode seems to be causing a great deal of bad feeling against Twitter. In addition, questions are being asked about many of those on the list and what they did in order to secure their massively valuable listing!
Robert Scoble was so annoyed by the way people were given these highly financially valuable followers that he asked if techcrunch had paid Twitter $10,000 for a place on the list. He also accused Veronica Belmont of paying for her place on the list.
The latest tech celebrity to ask these questions is Dave Winder. Here’s a clip from his blog:
TechCrunch uses their Twitter page to point to articles on their site, and every page has ads on it. So the gift from Twitter is worth dollars to them. It’s hard to imagine them pulling punches when it comes to reviewing the company. But are they likely to be more kindly disposed to the company? It’s hard to imagine when they’re delivering so much free flow that doesn’t earn them a warm space in your heart.
Dave Winer (like Leo Laporte, Scoble and the LA Times before him) has asked some great questions.
I’m wondering what the longer term impact will be, both on Twitter and as Dave suggests, the integrity of the people / brands who have been gifted all that traffic?
Related posts:
I’d like to hear what Twitter has to say about all this. What was their selection criteria? Why didn’t they pick a few relatively unknown, up-and-coming individuals for their suggested users tool? Also, did anyone actually pay for a top spot?
Seeing since Twitter doesn’t really have a business model to raise money, this could be an excellent opportunity for them to raise some cash. After all, “a fool and his money are soon departed”…no offense to Calacanis who actually offered up a quarter of a million dollars for a two-year spot! ;D
Charlie,
Believe it or not, they said that they picked “their staff’s favorites.”
The only criteria, according to Biz Stone, was that Twitter’s staff like you! If they did, you got in. Weird way to run a business!!
So, it was a buddy-buddy sort of thing, I should have known!
Maybe there was some sort of animosity between Biz or Ev and some of the former top Twitterers, and this is just all an elaborate scheme to take them down a few pegs! Ok, I’m just spitballing, but doesn’t that sound like an excellent conspiracy theory! :-)
We didn’t pay to be on that list… granted we know someone who manages the list, but our company does good things, and I think some people on that list are like that.
I know it’s been an extremely powerful benefit for our company to have been listed, we went from 1000 followers to 20,000 in the two weeks we’ve been on it. I hope they continue to find valuable people for the list- but don’t knock it till you’ve been on it!
Since writing this post months ago, Twitter have themselves said openly that the list is 100% unfair. They claim that this is why they have developed the Twitter List feature. I can guarantee this blog and my account will never end up on their list. We speak what we feel – that’s often NOT what Twitter wants people to read. It’s also why Scoble, Leo and others have been blackballed.
BTW: You better get as many followers as you can, the list’s getting axed very shortly.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_definitely_ditching_suggested_users_list.php