OK, I’ll be honest. I was going to write a post about a company I’d seen called Twittertise (the name is a combination of “advertise” and “twitter”) with the title “There Is No Advertising on Twitter.” I planned to argue that thinking of twitter in terms of a community that could be easily showered with ad material ignored the internal structure of twitter. Specifically, that an advertisement-driven twitter account wouldn’t get a whole lot of followers (people choosing to receive updates, here’s more information). No one hears you on twitter if no one is listening. From their about page:

We built Twittertise because it seemed to us that advertisers would in many cases want to schedule and track the effectiveness of their communications on Twitter. While we think the real-time conversation between brand representatives and product users is at the core of the unique brand/consumer experience on Twitter, in other cases planning and effectiveness-monitoring are needed.

Editorial or product teams will in many cases want to plan a schedule of tweets and then see how the offers or messages register with consumers: this is where Twittertise comes in. Tweets sent via Twittertise are infinitely trackable: you know how many clicks you got and from what sources.

It seemed initially that twittertise was focused on things other than a “real-time conversation between brand representatives and product users…the core of the unique brand/consumer experience on Twitter”, which I was prepared to argue was ultimately the only approach to take. The automation offered by twittertise went against the spirit of twitter and pushed a form of marketing that didn’t make sense.

But this was before I looked at their blog (actually a tumblr–I’ll get to posting about the importance of that new social tool soon enough). It showcased some of their work and, I have to say, it made a lot more sense than I though it would.

Here’s twittertise’s CouponNinja. Now, this a character that certainly might be worth following. They’ve got some other good ones you can go take a look at, but this provides the clearest example of the principle that underlies any marketing that belongs on twitter: it has to offer something to other users, there has to be a reason to follow.

No one is signing up to get spam emails, they’re trying their best to filter them out. Similarly, no one is going to follow an update stream on twitter that amounts to little more than micro-spam. But providing coupons is a service. There’s value there for the user. The value on offer in personal relationships that translate onto twitter is interaction: I can tweet at you, you can tweet at me, our friend can see what we’re saying and tweet at both of us.

Sometimes a twitter user is worth following not for the sake of social communication, but because they have something interesting to say. This was going to be my argument about marketing on twitter: the tweets have to be worth reading, there has to be some sort of content there. CouponNinja implicitly contests this by demonstrating that there’s more ways to put value into 140 characters than social interaction and interesting content.

Twittertise seems like they’re genuinely interested in innovating within the twitter-verse. Some good evidence of this comes in the form of a blog post explaining why they wouldn’t be including an automated repeat mode in their service:

I’ve been asked by a handful of users for a “repeat” option on Twittertise.  Something like re-tweet a given message ever day at 10am.  I don’t think, we’re going to add that feature; I think it lends itself to much to spam.  I’ve always felt that there’s little issue of spam on Twittertise, because only opt-in followers see any messages sent over Twitter.  However, with that said, I think a repeat feature would have the unintended consequence of annoying lots of followers and having them depart.

As it stands right now, Twittertise preserves the original intent of Twitter.  Each message has to be individual and actively written by the Tweeter.  Twittertise simply allows the Tweeter to space out his messages; which to my mind, creates an experience that is much nicer for the follower than 10 messages sent rapidly in sequence.

Also, several friends, have told me they are inputting their schedules for the day into Twittertise (i.e. “10am I’m at breakfast at the diner on 76th,” “3pm at a meeting around the corner from Union Square,” etc.)  This is ideal for people who prefer not to be texting all day but like to let friends and co-workers know where they’re at for on the spot meetups or just fyi purposes.

Long story short, I don’t think “repeat” fits with any purpose I conceive of right now, but who knows, the future is long. [Emphasis Added]

Two important ideas here. First, there’s an “original intent” of twitter that’s worth preserving. Second, no one knows what’s going to happen next. That’s why I’ve been posting about twitter so much and that’s why it’s the web 2.0 fad that won’t go away. There’s a basic and very interesting idea at the heart of twitter about a new kind of lighter, more dynamic digital commons that accommodates overlapping communities of various sizes while still existing as a coherent whole in some respect. However, the implementation of this idea gives rise to unpredictable and evolving uses of it. The same could be said for the web as generally, but the ease with with twitter as a tool stretched outward into mobile devices, diverse communities, novel organizational applications, and other contexts makes it an exceptionally lively space for innovation.

Twittertise is a good example of twitter being pushed in new directions and used in new ways. It’s a reminder that this is a case where no one really knows what makes sense and what doesn’t because that’s still being worked out–we’re just trying to keep up.