Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Twitter Testing Ads in Your Timeline

by Terrence O'Brien on November 2, 2010 at 08:30 AM

Twitter Ads in your TimelineTwitter is pushing forward with the next step of its money-making ploy. So far, 'promoted tweets' have been limited to appearing at the top of search results on Twitter.com -- but the company is now beginning a trial program where it injects these promoted messages directly into users' timelines. Don't expect to see your stream of updates overflowing with advertisement just yet, though. Early trials are being limited to users who get their updates via the third-party app HootSuite, which has about 900,000 customers -- a small portion of Twitter's over 175 million registered users. Twitter is also carefully targeting its ads based on who and what those users already follow. For example, if you follow a couple of local coffee shops or roasters, tweets from Starbucks may find their way into your timeline.

Rolling out the in-stream promoted tweets will likely happen slowly. Attracting advertisers and offering a unique product for distributing corporately funded messages is essential to the social network's growth and profitability. But the company is also careful not to alienate its users, whose engagement is essential to the success of the Twitter monetization plan.

Tags: advertising, apps, hootsuite, Promoted Tweets, PromotedTweets, social networking, SocialNetworking, top, twitter, web

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular