It seems that Twitter is going through a little bit of a change, or at least and update of some sort. If you take a look at your “Following” list on Twitter, you might discover some brands or people showing up there, despite that face you never followed them to begin with.
The first to notice this change is William Shatner, who has noticed it first on the social media site. Not only did he notice it, but he’s been actively vocal about it as well. In the following tweet, found below, he tweeted that MasterCard was showing up on the list of accounts he was following, even though he clearly wasn’t following them.
.@jack @safety Why am I following MasterCard when I didn’t add them? I do not appreciate this. pic.twitter.com/k91D6vTaXZ
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) December 30, 2014
Just as a not, it also noteworthy that even though it looks like he was following MasterCard, he really isn’t, as it’s merely an ad, a promoted account. A number of people replied to the tweet saying that that’s all that is happening. This isn’t focused merely on Shatner, but on a number of people on Twitter were asked about the situation.
Unfortunately thought, this could be misleading, as to those who aren’t don’t notice it at first, or aren’t observant, will think they’re following a brand when they don’t want to.
For a while now, Twitter has been allowing advertisers to buy followers by promoting their accounts in Twitter timelines. According to Twitter’s ad help area describes, a “Followers” campaign positions ads in a variety of places:
“Follower Campaigns are displayed in multiple locations across the Twitter platform, including Home Timelines, Who to Follow, and search results. You may see a Followers campaign if a Follower campaigns is relevant to you.”
To find out the whole story, you can follow the link below to head over to the original Marketing Land post.
Marketing Land: New Twitter Ads Make It Seem Like People Follow Brands & Others, Even If They Don’t
Original post written by Danny Sullivan