Newest Phase of Twitter's Revenue Plan: Make Money With Ads for Searches and 'Promoted Tweets'

Do you tweet on Twitter? If you read the "Twitter blog" you will notice a post dated 4/13 titled: "Hello World". In the post by @Biz. In the post a point is made in the very first paragraph that Twitter had a purpose of optimizing value before executing a plan to monetize one of the most popular websites online (at the moment).

News from the Twitter Blog

The blog tells readers that Twitter will continue to put users first and maintain the value of the site. The name given to the monetization effort is "Promoted Tweets". Twitter COO Dick Costolo made the unveiling of the effort at an AdAge Digital conference on the same day as the posting on the Twitter blog. The Digital conference is sold out but Internet visitors can go to Adage.com for full coverage of the event according to adage.com by going to this page. Adage.com coverage of Digital Conference 2010 includes an article by Michael Learmonth published on April 12, 2010 titled: Twitter Has a Business Model: 'Promoted Tweets'. In the article Michael covers what questions the new promotion, "promoted tweets" answers that people have been wondering about Twitter, how tweets will resemble ads, why Twitter is in no hurry for revenue and describes the ads timeline.

The Twitter blog provides a question and answer segment following the post that deals with how Promoted Tweets will be launched and an explanation of what exactly "promoted tweets" is, a look at what users will be seeing when they log onto Twitter and look at not only on results pages when searching on Twitter but also on their content streams as future phases of the program are released. The question was also answered regarding how "promoted tweets" will differ from the tweeting we are all used to prior to the unveiling of the new monetizing of Twitter.

The news about Twitter's move to make money from their massive online popularity spread fast through the Internet world.

Claire Cain Miller published an article in The New York Times Internet titled, Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads. Claire mentions several companies that are expected to run ads as part of Promoted Tweets including Best Buy, Bravo, Starbucks and Virgin America. In the article Claire recalls how Twitter's growth began in 2007 and rapidly grew in a "vertical line much like a hockey stick". Claire states that Twitter had 22.3 million unique visitors in March of 2010 which was up from 524,000 just the year before and these figures do not include the millions of users who use Twitter via services such as third-party smartphone and Web applications like Tweetie and TweetDeck.

When performing a search on Twitter on 4/16/10 using the keywords "Promoted Tweets" there were several pages full of tweets on the topic. The word is talking (I mean tweeting) about Twitter's big announcement about Promoted Tweets and the revenue plan that should make Twitter lots of money.

Sources:

Twitter blog http://blog.twitter.com/2010/04/hello-world.html

Adage.com Michael Learmonth; Twitter Has a Business Model: 'Promoted Tweets' http://adage.com/digiconf10/article?article_id=143237

The New York Times Internet; Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/technology/internet/13twitter.html?partner=MOREOVERNEWS&ei=5040