It happens to every website after a while – as soon as there’s a whole bunch of users, it becomes more and more plastered with advertisements. That is now starting to happen with Twitter.
Twitter has just introduced a flagship program for advertisers, allowing them to put their messages directly into the heart of the worldwide microblogging service. For now, though, it’s only being tried through a third-party app known as HootSuite.
“During this testing period with HootSuite, we will experiment with where and when Promoted Tweets are shown in the timeline. Not all HootSuite users will see Promoted Tweets and those who do may see different Promoted Tweets in different places in their timeline,” explained Twitter in a blog post.
This idea of “Promoted Tweets” first came up earlier this year when Twitter began putting people’s Twitter messages as “featured” posting on the main site. It costs money to get such a designation. But now, Twitter wants to take it a step further and actually integrate these paid-for Tweets into pretty much everyone’s account so they’re unavoidable.
We’ll see how well that pans out. But Twitter is committed to making sure it is a “high-quality user experience.” If you saw the movie The Social Network, you know all about the tricky dance between getting advertising revenue and making users fed up with extreme site spamming.
Even if you didn’t see that movie, it is kind of obvious I guess.
