Aww .. Twitter gets all grown up with Promoted Tweets

Well folks, t hat magical day has arrived.

Twitter has figured out how it is going to make money.

It’s called Promoted Tweets and is an awful lot like every other ad system out there. To top it off they are using all the same cute buzzwords like conversation and consumer relationship that will help bring you closer together with all those advertisers wanting to just have a really nice chat with you.

The way it apparently will work is that for now these Promoted Tweets will only show up when you do a search on Twitter for something.

When a Twitter user searches for a word an advertiser bought, the promoted message will show up at the top of the results, even if it was written much earlier. The posts say they are promoted by the company in small type, and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow.

The ads will also be a way for companies to enter the conversation when it turns negative. Several companies have created tools to measure sentiment on Twitter, but until now, businesses can do little with that information. Even if they write a post in response, it also quickly gets lost in a sea of complaints.

Companies will “be able to increase awareness in that instance when the iron is most malleable,” said Anamitra Banerji, who manages commercial products at Twitter.

If a new movie is getting negative reaction, the studio could use the ads to link to a positive review, for example.

Source: The New York Times

As I said above the ads are suppose to only show up in search results but not much is being said about them possibly showing up in our personal Twitter streams at some point in the future. I’m betting it will be sooner rather than later.

In the meantime it would seem that our cute little Twitter is growing up and taking it’s place beside all the other ad supported businesses out there. Whether it will prove to be worth the valuation that has been placed on the company is still to be seen.