The latest news from Twitter will take more than 140 characters. Last week, the social media company announced that it will begin allowing advertisers to directly target users, based on the interests they reveal in their tweets.

This means that if, for instance, you tweeted something on books, you will get paid ads, in the form of tweets, from a publishing house. Or if you used your characters to describe a dining experience, then you will be a sitting duck for restaurants wanting you to try their starters, mains and desserts.

There’s more than that, of course, because in order to learn about your interests, someone or something will be trawling through your tweets to better identify what your interests are.

Nothing wrong with that, you might think – after all, tweets are public. And anyway, it’s nice to have your own virtual con­cierge advising you on what to do and buy.

The thing is that this is not really about your interests – don’t let all that positive speak convince you otherwise.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently said they intend to build ‘an interest graph’ showing its users’ preference profiles.

‘Interest’ is the operative word here. Not your interest, but Twitter’s interest, because its move is only an attempt to cash in on using its flow of tweets – which are seen by 140 million active users every month – to send better-targeted ads. And no, you will not be seeing any of that advertising money.

Of course, it’s not just Twitter who is doing it. Google has been doing it for years, and raking in huge profits, by displaying ads based on what you look for in its search engine. And do you know what Facebook does with all your likes? Yes, you guessed right.

As expected, there was an outrage following Twitter’s announcement. A California-based software company went as far as to develop a Twitter-like service called App.net that is paid for but doesn’t come with advertising.

Unfortunately, that won’t stop the flow of targeted ads. After all, we might think the internet is that thin red line between democracy and anarchy, but that doesn’t mean it’s a free virtual country.

Someone, somewhere is watching you.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.