This is an interesting idea that I haven't seen before. Why shouldn't Twitter target trends at me? They know my tweets, and tweets of the people I follow. They could target trends, and ads for that matter, that I'd actually like to see.
Maybe they can't. They sure lack some core competence by not being able to block obvious spam accounts (Newly created accounts that: posts trend spam, do mass following and mass @mention, etc).
I'd love to hear someone from Twitter explain why the service seems to lack even basic automated spam detection. The only mechanism that seems to exist is the "report as spam", which takes so long to suspend an account I wouldn't be surprised if the process was manual.
It's the most obvious monetary play for Twitter that I can see. They know everything I like and don't like, people who I trust, topics I discuss, etc. If they could show targeted ads in that top bar I'd probably click on them like crazy.
Maybe they don't want to get into the targeted advertising market and see themselves more as general advertising? That said, you still don't see ads for women's lingerie during the World Series and you don't see many beer ads during Dancing with the Stars. There's a balance and I don't think twitter has it figured out yet.
As Marco points out, though, the #dickbar makes even less sense than running ads for women's lingerie during the World Series. The #dickbar is the equivalent of some guy standing behind home plate and holding up a sign that says #THONGS.
Methinks the first rule of running general advertising is to run advertising. Otherwise you are injecting noise for no reason. At least advertising is defensible noise ("hey, you want your free client, you gotta pay the piper") and it has a fighting chance of not actually being noise (some baseball fans do buy lingerie).
>Maybe they don't want to get into the targeted advertising market and see themselves more as general advertising?
Then I think they completely missed the boat.
The whole conceit of twitter is _you decide_ who to follow. They don't even start you out with a Myspace-esque Tom. Every user's timeline is unique.
So, if I'm following Roger Ebert, Kevin Smith, and Netflix, don't you think I would be receptive to DVD advertisements? Similarly, if I'm following Pogue, Mossberg, and Gruber, wouldn't I be receptive to iPhone app ads?
