One of the many observations I made since my move from the UK to the US, is that on the whole the American population is a lot more generous than the British when it comes to charity giving. I hope to prove this assumption correct with the start of “Movember” and Bite’s global initiative of raising money for Prostate Cancer Research – anyway I digress.
So when I saw a recent tweet sent by the infamous “cereal entrepreneur” Jason Calacanis asking his followers if they would mind him using the new service from Ad.ly to help raise money for charity, I was surprised that he was met with a resounding YES.
If you’re unfamiliar with Ad.ly it’s a new Twitter related service (who would have thought!) that allows you to earn (or donate) money by allowing advertisers to send out “relevant” ads in your twitter stream. You can choose the amount you charge per ad and to a lesser degree, the content. More importantly however is that each and every tweet is clearly marked as an ad – even more so if the money is designated to a charity – so it is highly unlikely you will click on it inadvertently.
Initially Calacanis wrote this:
Playing w/ Ad.ly: would u be pissed if I raised $5k for charity a week w/couple of clearly labeled ads/tweets for marketers? #payperpost
I would to think I’m astute enough to avoid the links if I want to and let’s be honest; $5k for any charity at the cost of two tweets is a pretty decent return. The rest of his followers apparently didn’t feel the same way, which Jason acknowledged – thus ending the experiment (at least by him).
Personally, I think it’s a huge shame for a number of reasons:
- It required no time investment on anyone’s part – ignore the ad if you want; the money still goes to charity
- Jason was honest and upfront; it’s not like he was trying to make a quick buck for himself (he has a fair few already in the bank)
- It’s for charity
- Again, it’s for charity – I could go on but you get my point
So I put the following questions to Jason’s followers and the rest of the general public:
- Is your time so important that you can’t bear to see a few ad based tweets for a good cause?
- Perhaps it’s the potential damage that could be done to his reputation that you care about it (although I think Jason has done plenty to impact this, exhibit A & B – much of the reason he is loved and hated so)?
- Or is there something else that I am overlooking? It’s been known to happen.
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Ben, I think there are a few reasons.
1. I’m not sure it’s the mindset that our time is so valuable; it might be that we are exposed to so many ads during the day that a Twitter stream might seem somewhat sacred from an actual person. Putting an ad in there might seem like it’s misleading. Or it just makes us uneasy. I’m all for charity, but advertising on Twitter streams seems almost unethical.
2. I think people are, in general, worried about reputation damage.
3. I think it’s more of a well he’s doing this, so now there’s going to be flood of people having ads on the Twitter accounts.
I believe it boils down to people feeling uneasy about having ads in the Twitter streams.