The microblogging site launched promoted tweets in April, which saw the likes of Virgin America, post branded messages which appeared into user’s feeds. It then went onto launch ‘promoted trends’ in June, which allowed brands to enter the trend column.
Twitter has now begun beta testing the two promoted products across “a handful of desktop applications”, according to Twitter Developer Advocate, Matt Harris, who posted the updated on the Twitter Development Talk Google group.
He added: “During this period, we aim to learn a lot, and we will apply those lessons when we expand distribution of Twitter Promoted Products to the broader ecosystem.”
Twitter has updated its application programming interface (API) to allow third party developers access to the two new fields.
Harris did confirm that each third party would take a share of advertising revenue but failed to specify figures. However, in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph in May, Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief operating officer, tasked with monetising the service, said that whichever third party clients chose to host promoted tweets, would receive a 50-50 cut of the revenue generated.
Evan Williams, chief executive of Twitter, said in the same interview that all monetisation plans were designed to include the Twitter’s vast and “unique open source ecosystem.
Until April, Twitter which has a valuation of approximately one billion dollars, according to technology analyst firm Ovum, had resisted any move towards traditional advertising in the four years since its launch – raising many questions about how it would eventually turn a profit and what business model it would adopt.
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, summarised promoted tweets as “ordinary tweets that businesses and organisations want to highlight to a wider group of users”, at the time of launch.
Initially the branded tweets only appeared at the top of some of the Twitter.com search results pages, in a similar style to Google’s advertising model. The second phase of the roll out has seen ‘promoted tweets’ expand beyond Twitter search and ‘relevant’ ones start appearing clearly marked in user’s timelines.
Stone said in his April blog post: “Twitter ranks as one of the most popular sites on the internet. Over the years, we've resisted introducing a traditional web advertising model because we wanted to optimise for value before profit. The open exchange of information creates opportunities for individuals, organizations, and businesses alike. We recognized value in this exchange and planned to amplify it in a meaningful and relevant manner…We hope you'll share in our enthusiasm as today we unveil a simple service we're calling 'Promoted Tweets'. It's non-traditional, it's easy, and it makes a ton of sense for Twitter.”
Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America were the first brands to post branded tweets.
Twitter executives insist that a ‘promoted tweet’ must “resonate with users”- meaning if users do not interact with the message – such as replying to it or re-tweeting it, it will be removed and the brand will not be charged for that particular tweet.
Nearly seventy per cent of UK Twitter users were unhappy with the idea of ‘promoted tweets’, according to a poll carried out at the time of launch.
Discount website, Groupola, polled 1,219 UK Twitter users and found that 68 per cent were upset about the idea of branded tweets entering their personal feeds.
Only 24 per cent of those polled, said that they would want to see a promotional tweet in their feed and were happy with the inclusion of advertising on Twitter.
Seventeen per cent of those interviewed said that they thought Twitter could monetise its service by having the site sponsored by brands in regional areas – allowing them to target people by location. Only two per cent said Twitter could charge people to use the service.
Would love to here from you...