Twitter, Promoted Tweets and the Perfect Storm

Today Twitter announced plans to roll out advertising in the form of Promoted Tweets. From Twitter's blog:

"Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users...You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages...Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand."

Reaction on Twitter to the news has been mixed. Some users believe that advertisements will be invasive and add clutter to an already chaotic network. Others (like myself), know that Twitter had to monetize somehow, and think that this execution is a great approach.

For my part, I admire Twitter for integrating these ads into search pages (and, at this point, not profile pages or Twitter streams), where they will be seen by users who are already searching for information on that topic. Twitter's mysterious "resonance" score, calculated by click-throughs and ad response, can add another layer of moderation.

What's most interesting about this launch is how Twitter approached it. I'm still in the anti-retweet button camp, so I'm wary of anything new that Twitter foists upon it users. However, from the perspective of a launch, Twitter created an almost perfect storm. Leading up to this announcement, Twitter:

• Began to feature posts that were popular (as calculated by retweets and replies) at the top of search pages:



• Redesigned their home page and added a section for "Top Tweets"

As opposed to some of their other feature launches, it seems like Twitter has really thought this through. Promoted Tweets, if moderated well, can provide a solid business model for Twitter, a better marketing experience for companies and (dare I say?) a more useful environment for users.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments!