Twitter Unveils Ad-Supported Business Model-Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as ‘promoted’

[The Straight Story]

Twitter Unveils Ad-Supported Business Model

Twitter announced Tuesday that it will start showing some sponsored Tweets on some search pages, taking a cautious first step into a traditional advertising business model that could provide a steady source of revenue for the four-year-old, billion-dollar start-up, which doesn’t yet make any serious money.

The initiative, Promoted Tweets, will put tweets from paying customers at the top of some Twitter search pages, clearly marked as ads, the company said in a blog post. Users would otherwise see these Tweets only if they followed the related accounts, found them by chance in a search or saw them randomly in the Twitter timeline. Including the advertisement Tweets with search results — what might be called the Google model — is less intrusive than putting them, say, on “your” Twitter page when you log onto the site. Promoted Tweets will initially appear on only a small proportion of search pages.

And since they retain the character and length of a Tweet — 140 characters, no in-line images — they have the advantage of not seeming jarringly out of place. The content would be exactly what a Twitter user might expect from a company promoting its message on the service, though this will make ignoring that company and its message more difficult.

“Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as ‘promoted’ when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect, they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/twitter-unveils-ad-supported-business-model/#ixzz0kzEnA31j

[onehandle]

1. This is exactly what I expected. The content stream is the only place you could put ads.

On Friday, Twitter bought 'Tweetie,' which is the best Twitter iPhone app. I thought that maybe they would re-engineer it to show ads, but what about the many other apps out there on so many portables? You could place banner ads on people's Twitter pages (and they may yet) but it would be messy from a design perspective.

I knew they would place ads as tweets.

Expect a Lot of complaining.

[Hawkeye-X]

2. I don't tweet, so I don't care.

Let them go all business ads as long as there no unsolicited tweets going my way.

[cbdo2007]

3. Sounds like they want you to be confused at whether it's a tweet or an advertisement.

Won't work. This is like on Ebay where you are looking through the search results and find a great one and click on it and realize it was an ad taking you someplace else.

Twitters are smarter than Ebayers and Ebay isn't even making much on their ads like that.

There is no way Twitter will be relevant 1 year from now. It serves no purpose that other things don't do better and there is no way to do what they do without heavy advertisements.