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Just 'Like' That, Legal Tweeters Can Grab Cash

When Bruce brought our Legal Blog Watch readers the news that law school graduate Rex Gradeless was getting paid to tweet ads for sponsors, Kevin O'Keefe was quick to comment, and didn't mince words:

So you use software to get strippers, spamers, and God knows who else who doesn't know who the hell you are to follow you as a lawyer on Twitter so you can whore yourself for $174 a Tweet. Great use of a law degree. ;)

Yesterday, Kevin was, himself, apparently extended an offer to join the world's oldest profession. As he posted here, Kevin was invited by a company called MyLikes to become a "premium influencer" on Twitter. What, you might ask, does that mean? From the email Kevin received:

This is an invite-only program that allows power Twitter users such as yourself, to make money by creating Sponsored Likes/ads for advertisers you choose and post them to Twitter. You get to set a price per tweet and accept / reject advertiser offers and write your own Sponsored Likes/tweets.

As you might imagine, Kevin was not too keen on the idea, calling it "disgusting," and a "betrayal of trust." Others, like some dude named Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web, have "disliked" the idea with less sense of outrage. But songwriter/poet/musician Stephen Pickering thinks MyLikes might have found the sweet spot:

I disagree. I think they are getting close to the magic formula for average folks to leverage the time and effort they put into social media. Does Twitter or Facebook want or care if their users, who provide the content that gives their value, are able to monetize their honest efforts? Heck no. Mylikes is enabling a way to do so. Sure there will be dishonest people gaming the system, but the way Mylikes is set up, it discourages inauthenticity, because the more inauthentic you are, the less reputation you will have, and real people, who may be really interested in one of your likes, sponsored or otherwise, will cease to click, if not unfollow you. This is the model Facebook and Twitter should be persuing, a way to reward their users, who are in fact their content providers.

I am not a big tweeter, and imagine I will never get an invitation from MyLikes, but tend to come down on Kevin's side. To the extent you're using social networking/media in any business or professional capacity, wouldn't you want to maintain the same (presumably high) standards and not dilute the value of your reputation in order to make a few more dollars? And even if you're just some college kid who tweets about how hungover you are, don't you want your friends to trust you when you tell them where to get the best bloody mary ever?

Posted by Eric Lipman on April 30, 2010 at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)