Promoted Tweets

Today Twitter is revealing their advertisement model.    Twitter users will now be seeing sponsored advertisements at the top of their search results pages, called Promoted Tweets.

How are people going to respond to this?  Most Twitter users view it as a communication link to friends and family, and a way to follow celebrities and other influentials through their daily tweets.  But is our Twitter social friendly environment about to be taken over by advertisements?  Granted an ad or two every now and then wouldn’t be much of a problem, but I’m wondering how far this will go.  My concern is, if Twitter doesn’t keep some sort of handle on the amount of advertisements, people will become annoyed and view it as unwanted clutter.  Hopefully it is a channel that can be congenially shared between social tweeters and advertisers, without stifling the image and user-friendly atmosphere of Twitter. 

I’m not sure if this will have a good impact on companies or not.  People, who already like, dislike or want to know more about a company, product, or brand already have the opportunity to follow them on their Twitter site.  Will additional advertisements be viewed as too invasive, or too pushy?

If done correctly and carefully these ads have potential to create a lot of buzz for companies and attract more followers.  From a marketer’s standpoint, it’s a chance to specifically reach people within their target market.  As a consumer (average Twitter user) I wouldn’t mind getting a few advertisements every now and then from companies that I am interested in, or about products that relate to my needs.  But, I do get annoyed with advertisements that continually show up on things like my email for products that have absolutely no connection with me or my lifestyle.  It gives me a poor perception about that product and company.  That’s why I say if these Promoted Tweets are done correctly and carefully it could be very successful.

I suppose we’ll have to wait and see how it all unfolds.