Today Twitter released AdWords, er, Promoted Tweets, the four-year-old startup’s first crack at a business model. Promoted Tweets appear when users search for keywords for which advertisers have purchased links to their advertisements. That’s the bad news. Bad news because users don’t really search for keywords; they search for hash tags.
And if Twitter thinks it can insert itself (and its advertisers) between hash tag users, it’s game over for Twitter (and its advertisers).
Consider the Twitter hashtag—“#ias10”—for last week’s Information Architecture Summit 2010 or this week’s MinneWebCon (#minnewebcon). Can you imagine how conference organizers would react to Twitter selling advertising against their conference tweetstreams? Come to think of it I’m not sure I appreciate Twitter potentially monetizing my tweets. According to Claire Cain Miller writing for the New York Times, reports that Promoted Tweets “could be based on topics they [Twitter users] are writing about, geographic location, or shared interests of people they follow.”
Instead of paying for raw clicks, as in Google’s AdWords, Twitter will measure “resonance” using nine metrics ranging from the number of people who saw the ad, the number of retweets of the ad, and the number of people that clicked the link in the ad. If an ad doesn’t reach a defined “resonance” threshold, the ad will scroll off and the advertiser will not be charged.
Also unlike Google’s AdWords, which appear distinctly separate from search results or web content, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets will appear in the organic tweetstream, raising all sorts of red flags. Not the least of which is how will Twitter users be able to tell a real tweet from a Promoted Tweets tweet? Think of it as paid Twitter product placement. Cringely does the math. But Macworld reports Biz Stone as saying that Promoted Tweets “will be labeled ‘promoted’ at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages.” Okay, what’s to prevent individuals with large follower bases from auctioning off their one commercial tweet per day, using Cringely’s model?
There’s also a bit of good news. Twitter also has eventual plans to boost individual tweets based on how relevant they are to an individual user.
C’mon Ev and Biz, a traditional advertising business model? Really? You’re both much, much better and brighter than this.
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