Tags : avatars, nsfw, Twitter
BREAKING: Twitter business plan discovered but it’s NSFW
Well okay maybe it isn’t a business plan but I could see it getting real popular with a certain segment of people on Twitter. The problem is how much will it piss people off. What I am referring to is the graphic at the top of the page which happens to be the Twitter avatar for Rob Corddry who some will recognize – maybe – from the Daily Show.
I found out about this from my friend Paul O’Flaherty when he IM’d me to get my take on this ‘naked’ avatar. My first reaction when he asked was pretty well that it’s a stupid idea and almost guaranteed to get one blocked as a porn spammer or something. That’s when Paul shot me a link to his post about this with the actual avatar being used. This was when he also let me know that Rob Corddry is also one of Twitter’s Suggested Users List – or whatever they’re calling it – so in effect anyone coming on to Twitter is going to see that avatar.
Paul’s question was whether or not I thought Twitter was condoning this type of avatar or as he asked in his post
Now, I’ve got no problem with Rob Corddry flashing his arse on Twitter, if I don’t want to see it I just won’t follow him, but I have to wonder if this is the kind of message Twitter really wants to be sending out – that “nude avatars are okay”.
We’ve seen a massive influx of porn spam on the service and god only knows the numbers of “horny kitties” I’ve had following me lately and if Twitter continues to, both allow the spam and promote Corddry as he flashes his backside to the world, then you can only assume that they endorse the use of such avatars.
Now that I have thought about it for a little bit I don’t think it is a matter of whether Twitter will condone it or not. The fact is I don’t see how they can touch this one with a ten-foot pole. You can almost be assured that if they did and try to step in on this they would face a howl of protest from the more vocal “social media” types on Twitter, especially if they happened to take down someone like Corddry’s avatar.
Sure this might make for a ‘cute’ avatar but really do we need to go this route as an attention getter?
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