

Twitter to Launch Ad Platform at SXSW - aresant
http://gigaom.com/2010/02/23/twitter-to-launch-ad-platform-soon/#comment-1007316

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thesethings
Gah! I wouldn't put it past the Twitter team to find an interesting way to
deliver ads. BUT, this is really not what I wanted them to make money off of.
There is SO much I'd pay Twitter for:

* A way to stagger/schedule delivery across time-zones (my tweet gets delivered at 10AM _your native time zone_ )

* Really cool analytics ("more people reply to you when you talk about Ubuntu")

* Behavior recommendations ("I'd send that cute animal YouTube video at 10AM on a Saturday if i were you.")

* Info about my followers: ("74% of your followers have talked about coffee in the past month.")

* more info about my followers: ("these people just send links most of the time.")

i don't even use Twitter for corporate use, and i want that stuff. I bet folks
using it for corporate/org use could think of even better stuff to pay for.

I think there are non-advertising corporate services Twitter could offer. I'm
not 100% against advertising, i just feel like there are a lot of us scraping
and hacking at this data through various tools, when we'd really rather pay
Twitter and not turn into accidental Twitter developers.

Also, some of this stuff is not available over the API, and they could totally
exploit that in a cool, fair way without being creepy.

Ah well... I'll hear them out on the ad stuff. I'm not gonna be one of those
premature haters proven wrong by history.

I will NOT be the Slashdot ipod naysayer :D

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axod
>> "Some Twitter users say they will stop using the service if advertising
becomes prevalent in their streams (but may be willing to pay a fee to keep it
out)"

It's hardly going to be rocket science to filter out adverts. I'd expect most
twitter clients will just filter out adverts or at least have an option for
the user to click to do it.

~~~
jazzychad
However, if Twitter offers a rev-share with the 3rd party clients, then they
will be less likely to filter them out and also be able to make some money for
their work. I run a semi-popular twitter tool site and am hoping for this
option.

~~~
evgen
The problem with this line of reasoning is that clients which refuse to whore
for twitter will gan users at the expense of other clients. Twitter will also
have to offer better ad terms than those clients could get on their own.
Twitter controls the interface from their own web client, but has very little
leverage over the other clients unless they try to enforce compliance by
limiting access and that strategy has a huge risk (mostly downside for
Twitter) if they attempt it.

~~~
gfodor
I'm pretty sure the invisible hand will cause this to not happen. Anybody who
makes an open source twitter client that doesn't suck will always wonder "What
would happen if I made a premium version that had ads?"

The net result will be that there will be many free crappy Twitter clients,
and a few polished paid/ad sponsored clients.

~~~
evgen
I was not necessarily saying the clients would be open-source or free, just
that it was not necessarily in the interests of the client developers to pass
along the ads. I use a paid twitter client on my iPhone and if they pass along
ads I will bolt for one that does not do so -- I paid the app developer to
serve my interests and not the interests of twitter management. For the
developers of paid clients I can't think of a single reason they would go
along with twitter on this issue and a lot of reasons why they would make more
money (by gaining users) if they filtered the ads. In fact, for the iPhone I
can see "get rid of these #$&* ads" being one of the most popular in-app
upsells for free twitter clients.

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haasted
The link points to an entry in the comment section. Is this intentional?

~~~
Angostura
Hi - I see you're talking about links, would you like some solid gold cuff-
links? Click <here>.

~~~
steveklabnik
Come on. Isn't this guy making a point about what's in the article?

> He added that the company will make it “explicitly clear that a sponsor”
> paid for the ad, and make it “relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think
> of it as an ad.”

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dotcoma
"People talk about brands and share their feedback", and companies should jump
in with… ads? Was somebody complaining about there not being enough ads?
Really?

~~~
evgen
The people complaining about the lack of ads were the people who ponied up
large wads of money to invest in a company with no proven revenue model.
Unfortunately their voices are a little louder within Twitter HQ than the rest
of us.

~~~
dotcoma
of course. but neither spamming people nor letting the likes of ad.ly spam
people will solve the revenue problem...

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pierrefar
Would be interesting to see if this is ads only on twitter.com or wide-spread
like AdSense. Also will it be self service or will it have to go through
Twitter approval first?

