Twitter Launching Advertising Initiative "Promoted Tweets"

Celebrities have been making money on Twitter, so it’s no surprise that the hugely-popular social networking site is finally altering its business model to include advertisements and make some money for itself. According to Wired, Twitter’s new ad-based business plan, Promoted Tweets, will launch today (April 13).

The four-year-old site has attracted new users hand over fist, but has not—until now—made a large profit. In a statement on the Twitter Blog, co-founder Biz Stone displayed a lighthearted attitude about the initiative: "Believe me, when your name is Biz and you’re a co-founder of Twitter, it also means putting yourself at the mercy of folks like Stephen Colbert who hit home runs with lines like, “So, I assume that ‘Biz’ in ‘Biz Stone’ does not stand for ‘Business Model’.”"

Promoted Tweets is in its first stage, which will slowly phase these for-profit Tweets into Twitter users’ search results, but only one promoted tweet will be displayed on any search results page. So far, Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America have signed on to advertise themselves with Promoted Tweets.

According to the Twitter Blog, users “will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages.” While these payed-for tweets will be marked as ‘promoted,’ they will not differ from other Tweets and will “be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand.”

Twitter claims that its new ad-based business model differs from other similar plans because the Promoted Tweets “must resonate with users.” So if users aren’t reacting (retweeting, replying, favoriting), then the Promoted Tweet will disappear.

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