Thread by @iowahawkblog

Let's face it, the only products that make sense to advertise on social media are bullhorns and Xanax
cnbc.com/2020/06/28/sta…

*Attention advertisers in the discount alcohol, salvage auto parts, or medical truss industries: DM me for rate card

ICYMI:

https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/1276994274228387840

Social media business strategy is pretty simple: provide a free "sticky" platform where users provide all the content, attracting more users, and more users, into your inescapable tar pit, and then selling billboards surrounding the tar pit to advertisers.

This works out great if you're in the tar pit business, because all the content that attracts monetizable victims to your tar pit are the *victims themselves.* All it costs you is some cheap low grade tar, and pretty soon you're rocketing up the Forbes 400 list of Tar Pit Barons.

The problem is that this isn't a sporting event or TV program segment, it's a bunch of screaming lunatic morons having meltdowns in a tar pit, and -quelle suprise- advertisers are finally deciding maybe they don't want to be associated with it.

The response of the tar pit owners is to hire a bunch of zookeepers to patrol the edge of the pit and thwack the most annoying screaming lunatic morons on the head, or evict them from the tar pit, all the better to monetize the remaining tar pit prisoners.

Of course, many of those who were head-thwacked or evicted will stomp and pout and head across the road to the NEW tar pit, whose owners will allow them to scream moronically as long as they can monetize THAT freely-provided user content.

The problem in all this to me has nothing to do with which tar pit has the Code of Conduct, it's the fact that the owners of the tar pits are making all the money off it, and you all are creating the only thing of any real value. And you do it for FREE.

You wanna know what I'd like to see? A social media site that allows advertisers to directly buy space on a user's timeline. If you're gonna sell eyeballs to advertiser, incentivize people to create content that *attracts* eyeballs.

*quality eyeballs.

Even if @FlatEarthTruthJoe88 has 9 million followers I suspect Coca-Cola would largely shy away from sponsoring him.

I would think the promise of a cut of a social media's ad $ would be an incentive for user calm tf down and create better content, as well as curate the trolls and such out of their followers.

As is though, it's only the likes of Zuckerberg and Dorsey who get all the revenue, and all they have to do is buy some cheap servers and hire some zookeepers.

When it comes to rewarding content creators, Twitter & FB make Spotify look big time spenders.

I have no idea if a cheap liquor brand or auto salvage yard would advertise on a Twitter Iowahawkblog channel, but I'd like them to have that opportunity.

And if it attracts $0.00 in ad revenue, at least I'd have the satisfaction that Twitter wasn't getting it either.