In my last excruciatingly brilliant installment on Twitter developments [I'm going to skip right over "New Twitter" as I'm still irritated with how it covers my delightfully whimsical background--it's good though, the preview pane is exceptional!] I discussed Promoted Tweets, or, essentially, Tweets that have nothing to do with anything you're interested in, but rather trailblaze a shameless path to profitability and drench your topic searches in a layer of irrelevancy. WHEW! Yo, can we really blame them, though? They might be the most prolific "business" in the world that has yet to really make a dime...  ...except for, HEY-O!, never mind, too easy.

The news? Twitter's come up with a second way to encourage your *I hope* non-clicking on very obvious (why obvious? Because of the giant yellow 'Promoted' designation next to them) twadvertising: Promoted Trends.  That's right, as ClickZ recently reported, now, in addition to Promoted Tweets, Twitter is now offering Promoted Trends, or an offering that guarantees a spot in the day's Trending Topics.  As the article indicates, for example, Disney paid Twitter recently to put Toy Story 3 among the Trending Topics.


WHAT??? Okay, let's quickly review the definition of Trending Topics: a list of the day's most popular tweeted-about topics. A few weeks ago, for example, it was probably Chilean Miners or something else equally as newsworthy and important, like a new Doritos flavor. Today, October 27th, it is PlayStation Phone...  PlayStation Phone? ...What is wrong with you tweople? Anyway, Trending Topics are an excellent way to get a pulse on what real humanoids like you and I are talking about/find important, etc. Now, however, with the introduction, and recent change to move Promoted Trends to the top of the TTs, it's taken an ugly turn into now seeing-what-big-business-wants-us-to-see territory.  Awesome, can I have another helping of Soylent Green?

Ok, too paranoid, perhaps.  It can't be easy to balance two mutually exclusive directives: maintaining the original "everything's free!" ambiance with profiting from user bases in the multiple millions.  It happened to YouTube, it (kind of) happened to Facebook, and now worsens with Twitter.  It's a shame though, as the integrity of the Twitter site, the idea behind it, is completely compromised. 

Or is it? The idea the entire time--Shyamalan-surprise!--was actually to make money! So, settle in, let's accept the nature of the web, and if you're content with the current utopian integrity of your favorite free site, prepare for a shakeup: "your tweet will begin in 30 seconds" is just around the corner...