Monetizing Social Media

I have followers who are obviously only following me in the hopes that I will follow them and then buy their product or service. They are using social media just to get people to buy their stuff. Others try to monetize social media by placing advertising on their content.Hopefully they have some content worth monetizing. I just read an article stating that some of the social media IPO's are down as much as 30-40% over their initial prices. The markets are, obviously, unsure of the profit potential of social media.

I find that promoted posts appearing in my stream irritate me much the same as SPAM does in e-mail. Only, this time, I can't avoid them by routing them to a SPAM folder. They are there for me to read -- like I'm really interested in the black friday specials from . . . or the weekly sales from . . . or getting my . . . adjusted. Nope, I'm not. We'll see how social media is monitized in the future as platforms like Facebook are utilized by more and more commercial enterprises.