With sponsored Tweets, will Twitter become more like Google?
With yesterday’s announcement of sponsored Tweets, Twitter is finally beginning to peel the money-making onion.
You have to make a living, right?
This first step in the monetization process is the inclusion of “sponsored Tweets” at the top of a Twitter search for specific keywords, thus pushing a brands key message to the top of the results list.
For brands and organizations this appears to be an advantage since their key messages will bubble to the top and not get lost in the stream even when active searchers are looking for them. So offers, coupons, brand messaging and reputation management Tweets will be easier to find and re-tweet (which will still be allowed and encouraged in this new sponsored-tweet world).
On the flip side, it appears to be a win for those following and search for those brands and organizations as they will receive the most important news and offers without having to go “deep” into the stream.
My only initial concern will this first step is that these sponsored Tweets will be seen in the same way that some folks see Google ads.
While a good number of folks can’t tell the difference between Google’s “sponsored links” (ads) and link position earned by good SEO practices, others immediately mentally block out the sponsored links just like they zip through newspaper ads or fast forward through TV commercials on their DVRs.
It will be interesting to see if the value of sponsored Tweets will be lessened just by the nature of the fact that they are sponsored and have not earned the value of re-tweeting and trending status the old-fashioned way — by providing value to their audience.
Will some people tune out these Tweets like they tune out the Google ads?
What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Jon Newman
In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.
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