UPDATE: I donated $250 to Children’s Hospital of Boston as a result of this ad.
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So I’ve received an offer from a reputable company to run a single, sponsored tweet through my Twitter feed, for a fee of over $200. My initial thought was to decline, but it occurred to me I could run the ad and turn the proceeds over to charity – Children’s Hospital in Boston would be an obvious choice, since we’ve been there more than once over the past few years and they have always given my daughter superb care, although I would spread the money around if I did this more than once.
My hesitation comes from the my assumption that everyone who follows me on Twitter signed up with the implicit understanding that there would be no ads. I’d like to feel like the bulk of my readers/followers are on board with any decision to take ads and ship the money off to charity, so I’m putting it up for a vote. If you have specific thoughts to share, feel free to throw them in the comments, but if you simply have a yes/no opinion, please vote and let me know how you’d like me to handle this. Thanks.
[poll id=”2″]
Perhaps you can use that ad as a starter for a small charity drive.
As a parent who has spent an ungodly amount of hours at a children’s hospital, I fully endorse that donation. The care given to children who have parents that cannot pay due to circumstances is because of generous individuals like yourself.
I think you would almost be foolish not to do this. Believe me, I think we can all deal with a brief interruption of our twitter feed if it was for a good cause. I would have no issue if you personally profited from it, but charity is certainly better…
While it would be a bit bothersome, if it were A) clearly marked as an ad (maybe something like “AD — Buy suchandsuch…”) and B) relatively sparse (any number I give would be arbitrary), then I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Once daily add would be of no hindrance, especially with proceeds going to a good cause.
It’s your prerogative. If you feel comfortable with the product/service you’ll be plugging, go for it. Since you read and enjoyed White Man’s Burden, I’m sure you’ll choose charities where the $ will do the most good.
As long as it isn’t a daily bombardment or disguised as something else I am fine with it.
If you can use your Twitter feed to help a good cause, why not? It’s just an ad.
If it’s once per day go for it. If it’s like 100 per day, may get annoying.
I think it’s a great idea. In fact, if you can get more money for such a great cause by allowing more tweet ads – maybe one per day instead of two per week – I’d be all for it.
By all means – anything for a worthwhile charity.
I’m assuming the ad will be baseball or food-related, so sure, why not?
I’m all for this. Occasional ads that generate cash for charity > twitter feed w/no ads but lots of worthless nonsense. (I’m looking at you, official Cubs feed.)
Already voted yes….I was just curious whether you would be open to possible suggestions from your readers for charities if this really is able to generate enough $$ to make it realistic to spread it around.
Thanks for the hard work, I always appreciate your analysis and snark.
How often are we talking? I would have absolutely no problem with anything once a day or less.
Absolutely do it. It won’t hurt any of us to see the occasional ad if it’s benefiting a charity.
I do not like, those ads I saw
I do not like, them Mr. Klaw
However, I don’t mind if it’s for a solid cause, and it wouldn’t make me stop following your work. I say do it.
As someone who, as a child (all of 6 years ago), spent a great deal of time at Children’s Hospital and MGH I fully approve of this.
If this becomes a regular thing – right now it’s just one ad – I will open it up to suggestions, absolutely. I hate to get ahead of myself, but at that rate, one tweet a week is over $10,000 a year donated to charity. I just felt like I had to ask all of you first, since it felt like a change in the unspoken agreement between me and my audience.
Of course – not an issue at all. I’m going to guess the ads for Joe Morgan’s book are not from you. 😉
No problem here.
Keith, it would be clutch if you did this!
the answer for me depends on the form and substance of the ads themselves. but since we don’t have a lot of information on that, it’s whether or not i trust your judgement. as i do, my vote is yes.
I hate to be a stick in the mud given all the positive comments here. Children’s Hospital seems like a great cause. However, my honest answer is that I will unfollow you rather than read ads, particularly if they occur regularly (e.g., daily).
I was thinking one or two a week at most. I’m not going to clog the stream with ads. And it’s possible the first one will be the last if I don’t get another offer like this.
I say go for it. Are you allowed to tweet a preface stating that it is an ad with the proceeds going to charity, so that your casual follower doesn’t think you sold out to “The Man?”
My initial thought was to say “no,” but I also don’t follow Twitter, so I’m not going to vote in the poll. At the same time, it’s a good cause, so if your followers understand why it’s there, I don’t see an issue with it.
No, its not ok and putting “charitable” in a sentence does not automatically give it an exception. Remember these people are following you, and not an advertiser. The proper way to endorse someone else on twitter is for you to RT your advertisers tweet which contains whatever message they are trying to pay you for. Seems like semantics, but in reality its far from it. When folks start directly tweeting ads, for profit or charity, is when twitter ceases to work for anyone.
No problem here. With all the enjoyment your writing has given me throughout the years, I would be fine with you putting the occasional ad on your Twitter feed and keeping the money. But asking us first and donating it to charity is quite a gesture.
This has nothing to do with your decision (donations are good), but if Twitter becomes a major source of ad revenue for many people, it’s going to be even more overloaded with useless posts than it already is. Although, I suppose anyone could un-follow people who post too many…
Jane: I agree. It seems like advertisers are only after tweeters with a few hundred thousand followers, though, and there just aren’t that many of us – under 1K last I checked. But I have the same concern and don’t want to contribute to the downfall of a great medium.
Ian: That really does sound like semantics to me.
John: Yes. I’m sure I’ll lose some followers, but if the point is to get money to a good cause, I should be willing to make some sacrifice myself, right?
Big difference actually. If you directly tweet an advertisement, you can do it whenever you want, however many times you want and with whatever wording and encoding you want. When you RT a tweet, your just giving a heads up of something that already exists. Bottom line is it much less likely folks will start trying to make adwords style campaigns off of RT’s than directly tweeting. Just retweet it, start a trend of doing things the right way and give some high fives.
I can’t change the wording, but I would have some control over when and complete control over how often. It’s tweet by tweet, and it would be labeled as an ad.
I absolutely think it’s a great idea and I find it really impressive that you asked before doing it.
Yea, I think as long as they are clearly labeled as Ads and they don’t overwhelm the Twitter feeds, go for it. At the end of the day, it’s your feed and you should use it as you see fit. I appreciate that you’re considering your followers, but you should do what you think is right. If you lose a few followers or frustrate others, that’s unfortunate, but I think is an acceptable price to pay if you are able to donate thousands of dollars a month (one ad a day would net 6 grand) to good charities.
Keep twitter ad free.
I think you should do it regardless of how the ads are marked, how often the ads pop up, or the content of the ads.
If KLaw wants to donate the proceeds that come from hit Twitter handle, then good for KLaw. That is quite admirable of him. However, I am almost positive Twitter is receiving a cut of any ad campaign and this is the reason why I think KLaw should do it. We all presumably like Twitter since we are following KLaw on Twitter and since we enjoy the forum Twitter provides, we should all be willing to deal with the minor intrusion of these ads. Sooner or later they’re going to have to figure out a way to monetize Twitter… they can’t keep offering this service for free. Plus, maybe they can even improve the service – meaning it won’t go out when someone scores a goal in the World Cup.
Anyway, that’s my two cents and I figured I’d offer an alternative view.