Twitter Unveils Promoted Tweets

Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter, today unveiled "a simple service we're calling Promoted Tweets." Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users.

Promoted Tweets is an advertising platform that is already being used by a handful of companies, including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America.

Starting today, you will see Tweets promoted by Twitter's partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. According to Stone, "We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We'll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don't resonate. 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. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page."

Twitter's COO Dick Costolo will be talking about this much offering in more detail later today at the AdAge Digital conference. Tomorrow, both Costolo and Twitter CEO Evan Williams will discuss this program further at Chirp.

---

Early Bird Rates have been extended!
June 12-14, 2013: Join industry experts at SES Toronto for a crash course in the latest strategies in Online Marketing and Advertising.
Save $300 when you register by Thursday, May 23.