Twitter starts including 'Promoted Tweets' from ad…

Twitter starts including 'Promoted Tweets' from advertisers in users' personal timelines

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Updated: 01:21, 11 November 2010

Twitter has started including advertising in its users' timelines in a bid to start making money from its phenomenal growth.

The social networking ‘micros-blogging' site will include ‘promoted tweets' in people's personal profiles depending on who they follow and what they are interested in.

Until now these paid-for inserts only appeared in Twitter's search function but the new move is likely to alienate many of the site's young users.

The new 'Promoted Tweets' will appear in a user's individual timeline and are paid for by advertisers

Since its launch three years ago the service that allows people to blog their lives in a stream of 140 character messages has never been able to make money.

Now, advertisers will be able to reach Twitter's 25million regular users around the globe.

The tweets from advertisers will be labelled as 'Promoted' to distinguish them from other normal ones.

In future, adverts will also appear on the site's home page when users visit it.
These will be tailored to the user's interests, which are determined by the messages they send and receive.

The company wrote on its blog: "As we have done since the beginning of our Promoted product efforts, Twitter is taking a deliberate and thoughtful approach to this test.

‘We're carefully looking at how Twitter users react to and engage with Promoted Tweets in the timeline. We want to display Promoted Tweets in a way that's both useful and authentic to the Twitter experience.

‘As with Promoted Tweets in search, we will display Promoted Tweets in the timeline when they are relevant.

'Similar to our Promoted Account recommendations, we use several signals to determine a Promoted Tweet's relevance to a user, including the public list of whom they follow. We will expand the rollout only when we feel we're delivering a high-quality user experience.'

Twitter will be expecting a backlash from users who do not ewant advertising to interfere wit the site.

One user, becrazy2wrote: 'm not looking forward to 'Promoted Tweets' idea. I may have to stop using twitter. I don't like ads & don't want them in my timeline!'

Another wrote: ‘it's official. I HATE promoted tweets.'

Unlike most other social network sites, Twitter's usage is dominated by older adults rather than teenagers. Just 11 per cent of Twitter's users are aged 12 to 17.

For years, the company has struggled to find an acceptable way to turn its popularity into a commercial, money-making success.

However, it now appears to be taking a much more hard-headed approach.

For example, it is charging Google and Microsoft's Buy Bing Ads Accounts - Account4sale.com search engine around £7million a year for access to its content so they can offer it in search results.