Honestly, that should not even be the question. Twitter should be seen for what it is at its fullest potential, a multi-faceted communication tool full of highways, thoroughfares, main streets and good old scenic bypasses. Somewhere on Twitter there is, with little doubt, an avenue of enormous potential for promotions marketing. Don’t gasp. A solid proof point is not only the success that a company such as Moonfruit had in generating impact and awareness, but also the near allergic reaction some web and social media enthusiasts had to its effort.

The word “spam” flies around Twitter at such a rate it’s a wonder it is not always a trending topic. In the specific case of Moonfruit, the debate on spam generated from its promotion centered on two key areas of concern. The first concern being trending topics becoming muddy and confused by mass #hashtagging, while the other was of a user’s followers “corrupting” or polluting their Twitter stream.

Taking each of these separately as an issue, I can’t help but wonder: Is it Moonfruit’s responsibility to abide by some undetermined code of Twitter ethics? Or is it the community’s job to tolerate the evolution of the network and, in that evolution, observe and determine how connections between people really work?

I think we can almost all agree that a social media platform like Twitter littered with constant #hashtag references in order to win prizes would be a death warrant. Still the first area of concern, trending topics, could be easily answered via a better Twitter system control. Allow companies to register specific #hashtags and specific keywords ahead of time, and let each company choose to opt out of or into the trending topics aggregation. Thus, the onus is on each specific company to deal with the potential backlash it might receive.

However, that idea might not sit well with Twitter users. Another approach would be for Twitter to have a series of trending topics. The user-generated organic topics and a preregistered #hashtag set are two I can think of right off the bat.

The other area of concern is really the big issue at the very core of social networking itself. Many users (as can be seen via the links above) complained of the spamming nature of users they were connected with flooding their feed with #Moonfruit entries. They went as far as indicating they did or would un-follow those participants. To that I can only say, really? There is probably a good chance if a few dozen tweets with #moonfruit ruined your user experience that you might not really be socially entwined with that person you were following.

Part of the beauty of Twitter is that no one is obligated to follow. It is all done completely by choice. There is a logical Twitter play here, where one could simply opt out of #hashtags with a simple click and therefore receive no tweets from anyone using it. But a larger point exists here. Twitter – despite its epic growth rate – is fundamentally a small network at the moment of fractured cliques. Moreover, the growth rate has certainly flatlined a bit recently. To encourage growth, you have to give people choice, not lectures of ethics. Social networking cannot and should not be singularly defined by how Twitter was in the good old days of 2007. That is not to say that early adopters should be lined up and dismissed, but you cannot possibly expect Twitter to survive without a variety of opinions and different roads to travel. After all, part of socializing is, on occasion, having fun. It would be ridiculous to claim that participants in the Moonfruit promotion were not having fun.

Categories: Conversation-Centric Marketing, Social Juice Promotions