Twitter expands online marketing

Disney’s Toy Story 3 became the topic of the first ever paid-for-tweet this week as social networking website Twitter launches its long-awaited advertising system.

The tweet was the first trending topic tweet on the the website to be paid for by an external advertiser. So far, Twitter has partnered up with a number of companies including Disney/ Pixar, Starbucks and electronics retailer Best Buy.

This is the first technique used by Twitter to make a profit from it’s popular micro-blogging service. By clicking on the promoted trend, the user is taken to the latest tweets about the movie.

Twitter’s system bears striking similarities to search engine marketing platforms such as AdWords. As well as being charged on a PPC basis, the advertiser’s promoted tweet appears at the top of Twitter search results page for relevant queries. Promoted tweets then follow the same format for content generation as all posts on Twitter - messages of 140 characters or less.

“Promoted Trends are a new advertising concept we began testing this week” the company wrote on it’s website according to an article on Computer World.

“With Promoted Trends, users will see time, context and event sensitive trends promoted by our advertising partners. These Promoted Trends initially appear at the bottom of the Trending Topics list on Twitter and are clearly marked ‘Promoted.’ As conversations about the topic increase, Promoted Trends may move up the list.”

It is unknown how long Twitter will be testing the new ad feature for.

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research told Computer World the ads were a good idea, as they had little affect the user’s experience.

“People will tolerate advertising as long as it lets them do what they want to do. Advertising that doesn’t get in the way is generally welcomed,” he said.