Author(s):

Stowe Boyd

In 140 characters:

AD is a leading indicator, like RT, at the start of Tweets denoting that the Tweet has been sponsored: an 'ad'.

Description:

I was involved in a longish discussion today, started by Brian Solis and a number of ther folks interested in some microsyntax to denote sponsorship. I suggested that the hashtag approaches being discussed had problems (see Sponsored Posts Microsyntax: AD Better Than #ad), and that it might be better to use something like RT, which denotes the nature of the tweet, while hashtags indicate the nature of the commentary.

Details and Use Cases:

RT is used at the start of a Tweet, declaring that their is a sponsorship relationship between the author and some other person, organization or group, which could be financial, or involving the use of free goods.

Examples:

AD I always use MentalMint (r) toothpaste. It’s so Minty, it’s Mental! #toothpaste #toiletries

AD this Nokia n99 cell phone they loaned me is cool especially the lens mounting and lenses #n99

AD Dear @stoweboyd, you might want to Whizbang.com, its a Twitter killer!

Alternatives

I discovered today (@gregarious pointer) that @savvyauntie has started using '[sp]' at the end of her sponsored posts. This actually is two bits of microstructure, '[ ]' and 'sp'. I would suggest that we might want to use the box ('[ ]') for something else, and put something so important as the type of tweet, like SP or AD, at the start of the post in caps.