Twitter Goes Commercial

The same week that the Library of Congress announced its intention to archive every public tweet, Twitter announced its long-awaited advertising platform <http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2010/04/13/twitter-launches-ad-platform-quotpromoted-tweetsquot> . The new ad platform is called "Promoted Tweets." These will be normal tweets from participating companies that show up on screen for those following the brands involved. They will be labeled, "Promoted Tweet," but they will disappear if users don't interact with them by replying, favoriting or retweeting them.

Twitter says that this is an experimental phase to see how users react to the concept. Eventually, Twitter's business model will be a two-pronged effort: 1) an advertising platform along the lines of Promoted Tweets and 2) commercial accounts. The latter concept may debut as soon as this year.