It ’s been a prospicient sentence coming but a Twitter executive director gave the first in - deepness aspect on Wednesday at how the microblogging service design to make its money .
The second pillar is commercial-grade accounts , which Twitter started to talk about last year . That serve will allow a job to pay for a Twitter accounting in replication for elaborate analytics tools and the ability for several people to brand to the same invoice . commercial-grade invoice are in beta examination with “ a twosome of hundred customer ” and will be offered more widely in the future , though Costolo did n’t say when .
It ’s a simple plan but one that has some potential pitfalls . Twitter will have to twine out Promoted Tweets in a way that does n’t put off users who have grown accustomed to an ad - barren service of process , and in a path that is seen as fair and transparent to advertisers and the partners who build third - party applications like TweetDeck .
Twitter will also have to be measured how it manage the personal information it can glean about users ’ habits and interests from their Twitter feeds . Facebook and Google have already shown the eccentric of backlash that companies can obtain of they do n’t abide by user ’ privacy .
Promoted Tweets show up today only in search , Costolo said . Location - base information will likely trace , he said , allow Starbucks to show a Promoted Tweet to users in a fussy city , for example .
But Twitter is also sitting on a potential goldmine of personal info , since hoi polloi ’s Twitter feeds bring out so much about their interests , taste in euphony and more . Costolo called it a “ real - fourth dimension societal interest graph ” — a puddle of valuable information about the topics its users are currently interested in .
“ It ’s super - interesting and compelling for party to be capable to target that social - interest graph . It ’s our objective to prevent them from doing it in a way that ’s spammy or … in some way negatively charged for our drug user , ” he articulate . ‘ That ’s why we ’re rolling this out so easy . ”
Journalist John Battelle , who interviewed Costolo on stage , pressed him further about how Twitter might practice that info . Will adman be able to habituate the societal - interest graphical record to direct Promoted Tweets at specific group of users ?
“ I do n’t now if we ’re going to do it like that , ” Costolo allege . “ We ’re going to be very conservative and test a bunch of stuff in unlike ways before we target this beyond search . perhaps the only elbow room it will work [ apart from hunting ] is geo , ” or based on a user ’s locating , he say .
Promoted Tweets is in testing now with a smattering of advertisers . Sometime before the end of the yr — Costolo did n’t say precisely when — it will be rolled out widely and developer will all have the option to display Promoted Tweets in their third - party applications . Today the ads are depict only at Twitter.com .
Twitter will carve up the gross it gets from Promoted Tweets 50 - 50 with third parties that take part , after it has subtracted various infrastructure costs and other expenses that will credibly amount to 8 or 9 percent , he said .
Twitter will trade Promoted Tweets ab initio using a traditional CPM ( cost per mille , or cost per thousand ) manikin , in which advertisers pay off for the identification number of times their patronize tweet is see . But it will soon move to a more complicated model that Twitter squall “ resonance , ” which has to do with how many times a tweet is reckon , retweeted , replied to or mark as a front-runner .
Battelle called that a “ compelling idea , ” but countered that they are , in fact , advertising , however Twitter tries to define them .
suppose they are not ads is part of Twitter ’s effort not to put off its drug user . To keep the ads unintrusive it will break testify Promoted Tweets that do n’t gain a high “ resonance ” grievance , Costolo pronounce . That think if mass do n’t select them , retweet them or show approval in some other way , Twitter will draw them from the website . At that compass point businesses will stop paying for them .
chirrup cofounder Evan Williams joked about the want for a stage business model before he introduce Costolo on stage . “ We ’ve had a little bit of flack over the years about not have a concern poser . As much as we ’d like to be able to recount people to shut up , money is important , ” he say . “ It takes a circumstances of money to run Twitter , and it takes a lot of money to do what you people are doing build your applications , and there has to be a solid revenue exemplar underneath it all . ”
