A Good Cause for Ads?

AdCause is the newest third party company that is trying to make money off of Twitter advertising. AdCause isn’t the first to offer a service that will connect twitter users with businesses looking to advertise. AdCause’s “hook” is that it gives Twitter users a reason to not feel bad about spamming their followers. The service allows users to donate proceeds to their favorite charity Quoting its slogan it is “saving the world one tweet at a time.” But will the promise of goodwill be enough to prevent the criticism and backlash that ensued after previous Twitter advertising models emerged? I think not.

How will the idea of charity make better the inconvenience of receiving ads through yet another media vehicle? How will followers even know that you are donating the money you are making to charity? And looking from the side of the user, I’m still skeptical that Twitter authors will want to monetize their tweets. My reasoning is that many users value Twitter for its usefulness as a vehicle through which to spurt out raw, random, thoughts. A stream of thought interjected by a commercial doesn’t seem right. In my opinion, advertising does not belong on Twitter. The inherent purpose of Twitter is conversation. It’s equivalent to having ads disrupting my IM conversations. But like any other popular social networking application, once a user base is built, a business models follow.

I don’t think we will see ads on Twitter go away, but I think any business that thinks it can fool the victims of Twitter spam will.