iPhone Savior: Is John Mayer Selling Ad Space On His Twitter Stream?

With Twitter growing some 752-percent in 2008 to over 4.3 million users, it's no surprise that wildly popular rock gods like John Mayer, have quickly carved out their own profile to connect with loyal fans in real time. That makes perfect sense to me. It's the next part that gets weird.

Sometime on Friday afternoon John Mayer announced he would start selling ad space inside his personal Tweets. That horrific revelation reached over 115,506 Twitterers following Mayer around tweet by glorious tweet. A joke you ask?

"Just signed a deal to sell ad space inside my Tweets. Now it's time to celebrate with one of the many low sodium soups from Campbells!" Mayer tweeted.

Several hours later John launched his first overt tweet hawking Campbell's Soup, complete with a link attached. His clever little lampoon was now officially in play.

"Guys, I just had an amazing soup by Campbell's, Steak and Potato. See all of the great varieties of hearty soups - http://tinyurl.com/c4gus8"

John Mayer's humorous social experiment into mass marketing via Twitter quickly struck a sour chord with loyal followers who swallowed the entire hook along with Mayer's bait. John had this to say;

"How can you be a sell-out when the high art in question is Twitter? Can you be the Bob Dylan of Twitter? "You know who always kept it real?"

Have I missed something? Can anyone really be the 'Bob Dylan' of Twitter? The final act in this short comic-tragedy was Mayer's hilarious response to one Twitt (erer) demanding; "We want authenticity, John!"

"I hear you. And so do I. http://tinyurl.com/29gfa3" Mayer replied in his tweet followed by a link to Prego pasta sauce. It's total evil genius at work.

The truth is, revenue-sharing ad network Adjix announced last week the launch of a new platform allowing text ads to be embedded within "tweets" (Twitter posts). Advertisements would appear at the end of tweets from specific users, who are paid in return for choosing to carry them on their messages. While it's possible that Mayer could be testing the Adjix ad model, I'm inclined to believe it's unlikely he would choose to alienate his core fans in the process.

"It's an interesting social study to read what people have to say about my selling ad space in my Tweets. Many are upset." Mayer said in his most recent tweet.

There's no denying it, John Mayer's sick humor is a wonderland as witnessed in his satirical Twitter spoof teetering on the edge of reality. Making it all the more brilliant. And if it's not some crudely designed 'punking' aimed at 100K plus twitteriffic John Mayer fans... even more brilliant!

Has John Mayer really sold out his audience to advertisers? The soap opera-like saga continues raging onward if you care to follow Johncmayer on Twitter along with a gaggle of Mayer fanatics growing by the minute. "Would you like some Wonder Bread with your Campbell's Soup?" No thanks John... I'm good!

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Comments

Twitter is a social networking site. People weren't happy when myspace threw up ad-space either. It absolutely is a place where people freely express themselves (and can direct people to personal blogs where they can further creatively show what they are about). Some people may be upset for the simple fact of disagreeing with his mock advertising but I don't believe it has anything to do with his interest in social experimentation (as he's never appeared interested in other people). John covering his page in adds and mocking twitter is another action that exemplifies his need to believe his intelligence exceeds that of others, and its in line with how he always behaves publicly. He doesn't recognize of the brilliance of how twitter changed the speed and access to information. I won't go into the psychological foundation of his erratic attention-seeking behavior. I think its desperate and sad and truly hope someday he'll slow his spitfire judgement and simply enjoy his talent, breath and let the rest go.

Posted by: Jane | May 20, 2009 at 12:16 AM