Promoted Tweets: We knew it was eventual & A few thoughts on Facebook

Yesterday, promoted Tweets launched on Twitter results. For those of you not familiar with Twitter, Twitter's "promoted tweets," or paid sponsored tweets, are now showing up in searches.

I'm sad to see that the self-motivational aspect of Twitter go, which depended on how much you could get retweeted, how many followers you could get, and how you interacted with them; that was what determined your success or failure, not your ability to pay to show up in search results.

Along with Twitter's new homepage, I see a profitable future for Twitter, one that involves more and more advertising dollars. It's hard to say if the original appeals of Twitter - one on one communication and the building of an online community - will prevail over the new advertising dollars. That's up to the Tweeple (yeah, that physically hurt me to type... won't do that again).

In other social media news, I read an article yesterday about Facebook users preferring to "like" something rather than become a fan of it. The psychology of those terms is very interesting to me, and given the extensive research I've done into the 18 - 25-year-old demographic, stems from a specific group of users. Because psychographic research repeatedly shows that Millenials prefer not to be subverted, I understand fully why the terminology of "liking" something sounds more pro-active, giving psychological satisfaction while maintaining a supportive relationship of a product or company. It seems like being a "fan" could count you as one of many, lessening the ability for the Millenial to be an individual. That's just what I've read into it, anyway.

A change I've waited for and still not seen on Facebook is, the dislike button. I remember groups springing up with the launch of the Like button, calling for a dislike button. There are the obvious PR problems of negativity that it could present, but this seems to be a classic case of The Customer is Always Right. If Facebook users want a dislike button, they're going to keep creating groups and sending emails until they get one, or they'll move onto a new platform that offers a better way for them to interact with their peers. I'm still waiting to see when it will happen, and the obligatory Facebook status updates as soon as it does. Failbooking.com and Lamebook.com will appreciate the new material.