Stowe Boyd

The so-called “promoted trend” is a massive symbolic stumble for Twitter.

It’s entirely inauthentic, just shy of truly offensive, and deeply at odds with the ethos that has governed Twitter up until 2010 - an ethos that turns out, in the end, to be about as genuine as promoted “trends.”

Further, it adds to the already difficult signal-to-noise ratio that is Twitter with mass adoption. Quite frankly, trends have lost a lot of their value since hashtag spamming exploded during the days of the Iranian revolt. Attention, even with thousands of followers, is hard to come by. Conversation isn’t what it once was.

Twitter remains a fantastic network for sharing links and coming across interesting information from a network of great sources. It’s also a terrific amplification and promotional tool for campaigns (and products of course). But it feels less social. And with paid “trends” and the direction for the company they may indicate, Twitter feels a lot less authentic these days.

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