Haven't we gone through this before, Twitter? Have we not learned this lesson yet? Must the dead horse continuously be beaten? Ads…in timelines…again? Really?
It is being reported by the Financial Times (and other reliable sources) that, as early as this summer, Twitter will take yet another stab at including advertisements in user's timelines. These ads will not be just anywhere on your timelime, however. It is very likely that these paid-for ads will pop up in the middle of your Twitter stream.
Imagine that. Scrolling down your timeline fully amused reading about thoughts, opinions and other ramblings only to have your joy stolen by an ad amidst the goodness promoting auto insurance. Thanks, but not so much. Twitter has tried this before and it didn't go so well for them. It happened with the Quickbar 1 (I just named it that). Those of you with iPhone's may know about the Quickbar 1 all too well. Quickbar 1 was a "feature" that floated at the top of Twitter timelines displaying a host of rotating trends, especially those paid for by sponsors. It wasn't before long that Quickbar 1 adopted the nickname Dickbar named after Twitter CEO Dick Costolo who was in charge of making Twitter profitable.
Users despised the Dickbar, to say the very least. It was intrusive, off-putting and was demanded to be eliminated. This single mishap-of-a-feature caused iPhone Twitter users to lose pleasure in (and in some cases even resent) the tweeting experience. One would think that by now the point would've been made: Ads are unwelcome here!
We get it. Twitter, like every other social network, must make money in order to survive. Is there any way for this to be done minus the sucky intrusive factor? There must be! The middle of a timeline simply does NOT seem to be the appropriate place. Take a page out of another playbook, why don't ya? Try Google for instance, Google makes great money (I'm sure) from ad sales without imposing on Google users. The ads are strategically placed on the side of at the top of a search where they can be easily ignored at the user's choice. Google had sense enough NOT to throw an ad in the middle of the search results as they probably concluded (rightfully so) that it would be frowned upon. Placement, Twitter, it all boils down to placement.
It seems that Twitter has their faith set on the idea that this new and improved Quickbar 2 will be much less intrusive on the web. How? No one knows but apparently they have this under control.
Take it from me, Twitter, users raged against the Quickbar once and we are not afraid to do it again. In fact, we are ready and waiting for the chance. Note: Just keep the ads out of my Twitter stream and no one gets hurt.
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