Paid Tweets and Sponsored Blogs

Adam Ostrow posted an interesting piece on Mashable this afternoon asking the question Will Pay Per Tweet Ruin Twitter? The post is about Izea moving into the pay per tweet market.

I really struggle with all this. Why do people get in such a frenzy about advertising on Twitter, or sponsored blog posts? I won’t be offering my Twitter account to Izea for paid Tweets, but I have no problem with people who do, do you? If so, why?

You have a favorite TV program, don’t you? You watch that program despite the adverts. You may choose to make coffee, read a magazine or just ignore the ads, but you don’t give up the program. Why then are people suggesting they’ll stop reading their favorite blogs, if the bloggers write an occasional sponsored post? Why are they saying they’ll unfollow anyone who starts paid Tweets?

All we have to do is use a little judgment here. If someone starts blasting me with advertising tweets all day long, I will unfollow them. But if they’re an engaging, interesting person, and every now and then they tweet about a product (which may well be interesting and targeted to me) then I’m happy to stay with them. In the same way, if I read a blog because I love the writing, I’m not going to disconnect when they write some posts for sponsors.

I love that so many people are writing so much great stuff for me to enjoy and learn from. I don’t begrudge them the chance to earn some money for doing so. Do you?

These may be interesting too:

1/ Eight ways to get blog traffic from Twitter

2/ Eight things I hate about Twitter

3/ When Mashable Tweets