Mashable’s Pete Cashmore hits the ALL CAPS on three points:
1. PAID RECOMMENDATIONS DESTROY TRUST
2. THE WEB ECONOMY = TRUST + ATTENTION
3. ADVERTISERS: ADD VALUE, DON’T INTERRUPT!
The problem: people assume that money is the web’s primary currency. But the web trades in other currencies: trust and attention.
Trust is the confidence we place in individuals and brands. I’d suggest it’s the highest form of currency in human societies: extremely hard to build and remarkably easy to lose (see Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents).
Attention, meanwhile, is the currency of abundance. In a post-scarcity world where billions of web pages cry out for my attention every second of the day, paying attention to you is a gesture that says “you matter to me” (see Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do, among others).
Twitter ads steal attention and destroy trust. That’s the exact opposite of what we need.
Full version: http://mashable.com/2009/11/29/twitter-ads-2/