Biz Stone, one of the three co-founders of the micro-blogging service, provided details of the long-awaited revenue-generating plan for the San Francisco-based startup in a post on the Twitter blog.
Stone said the advertising service, called "Promoted Tweets," will allow businesses and organizations to highlight their 140-character-or-less messages known as "tweets" to a wider group of users.
He said a number of companies, including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America, had signed up to take part in the first phase of the advertising program.
Stone acknowledged that Twitter has been slow to add a money-making aspect to the service. But he said the four-year-old company, which has survived on tens of millions of dollars in venture capital funding, "wanted to optimize for value before profit."
"Stubborn insistence on a slow and thoughtful approach to monetization -- one which puts users first, amplifies existing value, and generates profit has frustrated some Twitter watchers," he admitted.
Stone said "tweets" sponsored by advertisers will be featured at the top of Twitter.com's search results pages with only one "promoted tweet" being displayed per page.
"Promoted Tweets will be clearly labelled 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," he said.
Twitter has allowed Google and Microsoft to index Twitter messages in their search engines for an undisclosed sum of money but the advertising service unveiled on Tuesday is the company's first serious money-making venture.
Source: AFP
Is it going to change our use of Twitter? Will people stop using it to go for another mini-blogging engine? Wait and see...
Elise Guillet
@addition
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