Oh geez, say it ain’t so………
Its new program -- Promoted Tweets -- consists of "ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users." In other words, a business will send out a normal tweet about its product, and Twitter will turn these into promoted tweets, running them at the top of the search results page. If this program goes well, there are plans to move Promoted Tweets into your timeline -- regardless of whether you follow the product or not.
Quite soon, even users who choose not to follow businesses will be seeing 140-character messages about products and services while on Twitter.
And worst of all……
Yet users can't help but feel cranky when they came for the value, lulled into an belief that it would remain ad-free, and then discover that our timelines will be peppered with the words of "innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America -- with more to come." It's like putting up billboards in the Wild West. And it sort of kills the landscape and makes it feel a little more slick, a little less cowboy. [emphasis mine]
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