Adtweets, Twitter and........Google?

I think Twitter has just committed hara-kiri. They have introduced un-followed Ad-twts into your twt-stream. But soft, here's John Battelle in typical awestruck mode:

Regardless of where Twitter users consumer their Twitter feeds, the reality is this: Twitter's new ad platform will mark the first time, ever, that users of the service will see a tweet from someone they have not explicitly decided to follow.

And that marks an important departure for the young service. One that I think is both defensible, and, if done well, could be seminal to both Twitter and to its partners - both new (marketers) and old (developers). More on that when I come back....

..........

The key question then becomes, as it was with Google's AdWords - will that which they see be relevant, useful, valuable?

Defensible and Seminal? - mayhap, but it will also be bloody irritating - this seems to bear all the marks of Dick "stuff Ads in Feedburner and sell the f*cker to Google before all the customers bail" Costolo. He claims it will "resonate" with users.

“The promise of Promoted Tweets is this: Brands and companies will not pay for Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate, and users will not see Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate.”

Resonate, eh? I eagerly await the first "AdTweet Killers" in the 3rd party clients (before they get strangled). Given how loved Pop-Ups were, I give it 2 weeks after the first Ads appear. (Unless a condition of operation of the 3rd party sites is not blocking 'em of course )

Still, ya gotta make your bucks somehow. Twitter is the only useful bit of the WebComm world which is largely spam free, so clearly that is unacceptable and could not continue.

So, we await the sale to Google (before all the customers bail) with bated breath