Twitter finally makes money

After Facebook began spamming profiles with adverts, Twitter is now following suit; but in a different manner. The microblogging website did not have a revenue model in place until now.

Twitter

After Facebook began spamming profiles with adverts, Twitter is now following suit; but in a different manner. The microblogging website did not have a revenue model in place until now. With what are being called Promoted Tweets, Twitter allows companies to be trending topics and in turn get visibility on as many time lines as possible.

First Phase

This means, if anyone clicks on any person’s ID, which has a promoted tweet sign next to it, they will be directed to all the tweets made about that person, plus a special mention from, for instance, its employer. That tweet will be artificially placed there along with all the other tweets.

“We are still in our first phase of Promoted Tweets, so we’ve only launched with a handful of advertisers. We will use a simple

impression-based pricing model until we, and our partners, can understand the value of promoting tweets better,” says Carolyn, a spokesperson for the site.

In international media, one of the current promoted tweets has been that of LeBron James, an NBA player. Though this model may not be a permanent one, it is still being tested.

“We call these collective indicators Resonance and believe that over time a pricing model based on Resonance will be better tuned to the actual value of promoting a tweet than the simple cost per click or dollars per friend, fan or follower models,” she adds.