Over on Twitter I decided partly as an experiment and mostly just for fun to create a sub character to my already very decidedly caricature of myself.. I created Freelance Ad Guy and since his wisdom would be sporadic at best he became a sub character instead of having a whole new account. I like to think of my Twitter account as a sitcom with an ensemble cast. Why would there be a need for Freelance Ad Guy? Well he takes all that goes wrong behind the scenes not only in Advertising and Marketing but the whole creative workplace and then relates it in an entertaining manner. Now in doing this I have offended some people because he does hit a little too close to home for some and.. well… I get to see Freelance Ad Guy as an acronym.. some people are just not very nice. The more fun ones are when I get accused of giving out “trade secrets” sure sometimes Freelance Ad Guy gives acceptable wisdom but for the most part its a joke, not to be taken seriously. I wouldn’t hire Freelance Ad Guy and I would hope you wouldn’t either. Obviously people out there are because I would’ve ran out of material before I started if Freelance Ad Guy wasn’t getting work. I look at this little Twitter show of mine as an extension of what I try to do with my interns, I don’t so much focus on teaching them how to use particular software because they should already know that, I focus on trying to impart all the things I learned the hard way doing this for almost twenty plus years. Now if they listen I don’t know but I can at least say I tried…

I doubt there is any formula that can replicate such a high quality of suggested users to follow on Twitter.  The suggested followers list that Twitter now has is a mystery box, no one outside of Twitter knows how its produced and the likes of Robert Scoble has inferred there might be some sort of payola going on to get you on the list. If Scoble’s theory is correct and individuals or most likely companies individuals are working for are paying to have their high profile employees show up on this list giving them instant access to thousands of new eyeballs, then the usefulness of Twitter is now dead.

If someone can pay Twitter to have their name shoved in front of every new user signing up and to be just a click away from having unrestricted access to filling potentially tens of thousands of users time-lines with whatever marketing propaganda we’ll start to see users flee from Twitter in droves.  Now Everyone has done this from time to time, they see someone they respect post a URL on twitter and then follow it, that’s a powerful bit of marketing. Now imagine that company X pays Twitter to have their favorite online celebrity be on the suggested user list and then that celebrity tweets about the product from company X and links the website.  Boom!  Unquie page views out the wazoo, that has to be worth a lot to a company. Also, seeing that Twitter doesn’t have a solid revenue stream right now, it could be very tempting to them.

Truthfully I don’t see a huge problem with Twitter using their suggested user list as a source of income, where I find issue is Twitter not disclosing that fact.  It may only be sitting wrong with me because I have perhaps a misguided view about holding tech journalists to the same standards of integerity that I hold news journalists to and I don’t like the thought of that intergrity being put into question.