As the power of micro-blogging platform Twitter grows, so too does its influence on consumers. But are celebrities and power users––even Twitter itself––acting disingenuously by continuing to use their audience as fodder for mass-marketed, mass-tweeted brand messaging? At what point do our favorite celebrities with their fancy “verified accounts” lose their right to publish?
Since last year, networks like Ad.ly have pushed tweeted messages on devotees that are tied, loosely-at-best, to the celebrity who willingly broadcasts them. (A full list runs the gamut of in-the-news celebs––and even E! Online themselves.) Take one client up for grabs: plastic surgery addict Heidi Montag, who boasts an impressive million-plus following on @heidimontag. Last week, she pimped out a number of brands through tweets directed by the service, as denoted by the “(Ad)” footer and “via” details:

Not that Heidi’s twitter is any bastion of integrity or high-minded discourse to begin with — it’s mostly one long, boring advertisement for herself. But something feels off about this advertising technique.

Twitter is also in on this action. Their “Promoted Tweets” allow brands to pin selected messages not to celebrities, but to the top of a given conversation. And their newly launched “Promoted Trends” platform goes even further, letting brands buy placement on a once-organic list of the biggest topics being buzzed about. They claim that a topic can only become “Promoted” to the main list if it has already achieved a lesser “trending” status. Nonetheless, is Twitter selling out their users by letting brands buy the conversation and, at least to a degree, fake the buzz?

We’re opening the floor for discussion (and testing our new comments system!).

Does behavior like this––either from a trusted celebrity, or from Twitter itself––phase you? Are you willing to stand a little static in order to receive candid updates from your favorite media figures and to check in on the bigger conversation? Do these ads inevitably cheapen that which should be a genuine stream of 140 character messages––to be delivered solely from the horse’s mouth, and without filter or precedence? As Twitter experiments with different advertising models, what do you want to see?

Shoes of Prey certainly seemed to be on to something when they recently collaborated with juicystar07––a much-watched youtube celeb––to successfully spread their name to a devout following.

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