Twitter Puts Promoted Tweets In Timelines--From Companies You're Not Following (PICTURES)

As promised, Twitter has begun testing the addition of more ads in users' timelines.

These ads will appear in the form of Promoted Tweets, (aka paid tweets), which are first posted on the sponsor company's Twitter account and distributed widely throughout the Twitter network.

Launched in 2010, Promoted Tweets have in the past been visible around the site, appearing at the top of relevant search pages and in trends lists. In July, promoted tweets began appearing in users timelines, but only from brands that users were following. Now, however, ads will appear in users' timelines from companies they're not following.

A post in the Twitter Help Center outlines the changes that users can expect to see:

A Promoted Tweet will appear in a user's timeline only if the Tweet is likely to be interesting and relevant to that user. [...] Our platform uses a variety of signals to determine which Promoted Tweets are relevant to users, including what a user chooses to follow, how they interact with a Tweet, what they retweet, and more. [...] Once a user has seen a Promoted Tweet in their timeline, they will never see that Promoted Tweet again.

The test is limited to a small number of users for now, according to a tweet from Twitter's global PR account. The initiative will be rolling out to more users this Fall, as a Twitter's Matt Graves explained in an email.

"Initially, we will make this feature available to a single-digit percentage of our global user base," wrote Graves. "Of this group, we will only show Promoted Tweets to people from advertisers relevant to their interests. We are carefully measuring how users respond to and engage with these Tweets; based on this response, we will roll this capability out to a wider audience in the coming months."

How will users know which tweets are actually ads? "Promoted Tweets are clearly labeled as Promoted when an advertiser is paying for their placement on Twitter. In every other respect, Promoted Tweets act just like regular Tweets and can be retweeted, replied to, favorited and more," writes Twitter.

While you cannot block these Promoted Tweets from appearing in their timelines, you can get rid of one once it has appeared. From the Twitter Help Center: "Users who dislike a Promoted Tweet can simply dismiss it from their timeline with a single click, using the 'Dismiss' button that appears as part of the Tweet."

So far, Twitter has partnered with the following companies for this expansion of Promoted Tweets:

• AMC Theatres (@AMCTheatres)


• American Express (@americanexpress)


• Best Western (@bestwesternUS)


• Disney (@realsteelmovie)


• HP (@hp, @hpdeals & @hpprint)


• Lexus (@lexus)


• Lionsgate (@lionsgatemovies)


• MovieTickets.com (@MovieTickets)


• Pepsi (@pepsi)


• Red Bull (@redbull)


• Salesforce.com (@salesforce)


• Sephora (@sephora)


• Xbox (@Xbox)


• Yahoo! (@yahoo and @yahoo_music)

Comments

[lizmckenzie55]

11:53 AM on 09/15/2011

So what. I have so many tweeps tweeting that if any of these promoted tweets come through, more than likely I will never see it.

[GoogleFacebookiPhone]

09:56 AM on 09/14/2011

Today I am going to delete my Twitter account. This is ridiculous.
----------------
Majid Ali
http://googlefacebookiphone.blogspot.com

[lizmckenzie55]

11:53 AM on 09/15/2011

You don't have a Twitter account.

[GoogleFacebookiPhone]

09:46 AM on 09/17/2011

how do you know that I don't have twitter account.

[AceNewsServices]

07:03 AM on 09/14/2011

Well everyone knew that this was coming and the reason why social media companies position themselves in this market, the question is how will this affect the number of of Twitterer`s and tweets. The reason l say that is because l use twitter basically to tell people my thoughts by which ones l like or believe will be useful to who ever follows me. Over much research and tried and tested tweeting l have been able to get differing companies to follow me expecting to pick up tips and deals to others hoping they can use a snippet of news in their own way to their followers.

So my question Twitter to you is by promoting tweets from companies we do not follow in our timeline`s will this not just confuse the issue of statistics based monitoring based on the true like or dislikes of the person using your site, leading to being unable to tailor contracts for your partnered companies and will this not just lead to confused analytics and more complex results?

Or maybe you know that and have a reason as by us dismissing it after it has been shown you measure the effectiveness or not of the ads, enabling further utilization of statistics to make the consumer purchase more goods and services.

[Feross Aboukhadijeh]

07:15 PM on 09/13/2011

This doesn't bother me at all.

[lizmckenzie55]

11:57 AM on 09/15/2011

Are you even on Twitter? If not, of course it wouldn't!!!

[The JillyBean]

07:00 PM on 09/13/2011

it's a free app. You're an idiot if you're surprised or angered by this. Duh.

[Stay Up Shabazz]

06:26 PM on 09/13/2011

FOH. I deal with enough commercial's of products I don't give an eff about and now it's on my TL?

#PASS!

[Roeland]

06:26 PM on 09/13/2011

They also have to pay bills (servers, keeping twitter running etc). So I'm not bothered about it.

[nana41]

10:47 PM on 09/13/2011

Their servers can't handle the current flow servers always overloaded according to the error messages.. They had better put that income to good use quickly upgrade the servers & increase the 140

[lizmckenzie55]

11:56 AM on 09/15/2011

Neither am I. I don't know how often you're on Twitter but with all the tweets I receive, if there is a promo in there somewhere more than likely I will never see it. Besides, I focus on certain tweeps and the rest is pretty much background c. rap.