The innovative ads bear a striking resemblance to Digg Ads

Apr 13, 2010 13:31 GMT  ·  By

Twitter has finally unveiled its greatly anticipated advertising platform, or at least its “first phase.” People have been waiting for a Twitter business model for years now and the company has done its share in bringing up expectations. Now that Twitter has launched its “really cool” ads, the initial reaction is that they’re not as “revolutionary” as one might have expected. Dubbed Promoted Tweets, these aren’t ads per se, just regular tweets that companies pay to have them show up on top of searches for related terms.

“We hope you'll share in our enthusiasm as today we unveil a simple service we're calling Promoted Tweets. It's non-traditional, it's easy, and it makes a ton of sense for Twitter,” Biz Stone, Twitter cofounder, announced.

“We are launching the first phase of our Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America -- with more to come. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users,” he explained.

By definition, Promoted Tweets aren’t really ads. They have to be posted just like any other tweet and be a part of the ecosystem before a company is able to use them in their campaign. But since companies are able to say anything on Twitter and will be able to promote their own tweets, in the end, most will be just regular ads, albeit with a 140-character limit.

However, there are a few twists. For one, Promoted Tweets don’t have a guaranteed spot. If they don’t attract interest and user response (what Twitter calls resonance), they will be pulled and the advertiser won’t have to pay anything. Users will also be able to reply or retweet, just like with any other tweet. As Twitter learns how people react to and interact with Promoted Tweets, it will start rolling them out in other places including in people’s Twitter streams. All of this sounds reasonable enough, not exactly revolutionary, but interesting.

That is, of course, until you factor in the fact that Digg has been doing pretty much the same thing for months now with Digg Ads. Like Promoted Tweets, Digg Ads show up in the regular stream, but are clearly labeled as ads. Users can interact with them just like with any other entry, digg or bury them. If an add proves unpopular, it gets pulled. And Digg advertisers can choose to promote their own content or any other story out there. Digg Ads have proven quite successful for the news social aggregator, so maybe they can work for Twitter too.