Rumour worth following
Twitter is apparently considering pushing adverts into users timeline streams, according to the Financial Times. Twitter execs are said to have met at the Cannes Lion festival to discuss the possibility of offering 'promoted tweets' to advertisers.
Promoted tweets would appear in between posts from accounts users follow, making them much harder to ignore than adverts placed around the site - and of course making it easier to integrate into mobile clients an important consideration given that a large proportion of Twitters user base never hits its website. Tweets from brands users follow might also get special treatment, appearing high up the stream despite the time of their posting, giving greater prominence than they might otherwise receive.
Currently twitter offers promoted tweets at the top of lists of popular discussions, and advertisers pay for lets promoted accounts, which then sit in the list of those recommended to follow. These are less intrusive than the proposed promoted tweets, as they don't interfere with the (currently) user-defined main stream of tweets. The problem for both Twitter and advertisers, is that on many mobile apps theses promoted users and adverts are completely invisible, hence the desire to push promoted content into the main stream
Twitter has long sought a way to monetise its over three hundred million users, but previous attempts to add adverts have been met with resistance from users leading Twitter to re-evaluate its advertising strategy. The time may yet come when Twitter has to accept some abandonment of its service, in order to make it financially viable.
