Twitter won't "rule out" ads - Warc News

News: September 14, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter, the microblogging website, will launch a number of optional, paid-for features for corporate users of its portal later this year, and has not "ruled out" turning to advertising as a means of generating further revenue.

Writing on a company blog, Biz Stone, one of the social messaging utility's co-founders, argued that, in the beginning, it was perceived in some quarters as being "fun, but ... not useful."

According to comScore, however, 44.5 million people around the world accessed Twitter in June – including 20.1 million in the US – a figure that was 15 times greater than the same month in 2008.

Similarly, an increasing number of brands have been attempting to utilise this and other social networking tools in an effort to engage with consumers.

In order to "more appropriately reflect the nature of Twitter and convey key issues such as ownership," the organisation has now updated its terms of service, Stone said.

These provisions emphasise that any "tweets" belong to users rather than the company, although Twitter does have the right to reproduce, modify, publish and distribute them.

Another area where it is seeking to develop guidelines is for the "apps" which "have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem."

With regard to marketing communications, Stone wrote that it would "leave the door open for advertising", in order to "keep our options open."

More specifically, the new terms and conditions state that Twitter can "include advertisements, which may be targeted to the content or information on the services, queries made through the services, or other information."

"The types and extent of advertising by Twitter on the services are subject to change," it added, continuing that "third-party providers and partners may place such advertising on the services."

Stone also recently announced that the online property intends to launch a variety of tools for companies using its system, with these additions going live in the fourth quarter of this year.

They could include an "analytics dashboard" enabling marketers to track sentiment about their brands, and officially verified accounts.

For consumers, it is also developing a system that will help new users "find" other people who share their interests, or who live in the same area.

Last week, Facebook introduced a "Lite" version of its service, allowing members to link messages to those of their friends simply by adding the "@" symbol, in a manner similar to that used by Twitter.

On a company blog, Facebook engineer Tom Occhino said this will allow them to "choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications, and pages."

Data sourced from Twitter/Bloomberg; additional content by WARC staff, 14 September 2009

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