Twitter Announces Advertising Via Tweet

In a post on the Twitter Blog yesterday, the popular micro-blogging service announced that they will be serving ads, or “promoted tweets” in the timelines of users who follow the company that's advertising. Twitter has been looking for a way to be profitable for years now, and nobody is quite sure if they've managed it yet. Especially considering that the CEO last week flatfly refused to reveal whether or not the company had made any profit yet.

Monetising Twitter

However, it seems that they might have finally managed it with their newest strategy, which will see adverts called Promoted Tweets appearing at, or near, the top of the timelines for people who follow those companies. Now that seems like a pretty good idea. If you're following a company, you probably expect and receive marketing messages anyway. And because you're following them, you probably want to hear from them. To start with, Twitter is only going to be doing this with a few companies, like Microsoft, Xbox, and Red Bull. (Dell too, and that's amusing given the Dell Hell controversy of the not too distant past.) They'll also be doing it for some non-profit organisations, and they were quick to explain that Promoted Tweets would only appear once, and that they could be easily dismissed from the timeline. This will be worth keeping an eye on. But it looks like Twitter has finally found a way to turn a profit.