The web is rife with speculation and rumour.
Today, Twitter’s in the spotlight.
Rumour has it that Twitter is planning to roll out Facebook-style brand pages in an effort generate that illusive advertising revenue it’s been seeking for so long.
Efforts to date have been half-baked and generally unpopular with the Twitter community. This latest effort, speculative as it is, looks like no exception.
The magic of Twitter is its simplicity. Fast, digestible content.
Twitter is, or should be, solely about the content, not your avatar, not your background nor your bio… especially not where brands are concerned.
Twitter has given brands the golden opportunity to expose themselves and engage with their fans openly and honestly in a neutral environment, as soon as brands forget about the conversation and put emphasis on directing people to their brand page they risk damaging relationships.
It just seems that branded Twitter pages would contradict the very nature of Twitter.
Another big consideration – who’s going to be looking at said pages?
Recent data revealed that only 58% of tweets come from official Twitter clients, fewer still from twitter.com. Smartphone usage is on the rise too, suggesting that figure will continue to drop.
With this in mind the likelihood of users visiting brand pages is pretty low.
If Twitter really is going to go ahead with this, not only is it likely to upset a few people, there’s also a very big chance of it falling flat on it’s face.
Cue the Fail Whale.
