Promoted Tweets and Microsoft's Kin

14/04/10 posted by Annie

Twitter's long awaited foray into regular income-earning has finally been revealed. "Promoted Tweets" will allow companies to hand over cash to ensure their Twitter activity is lifted above the constant flow of mundane status updates. A company's ad will show up when Twitter users search for the keywords paid for by the advertiser. The promoted message will be shown at the top of the results, even if there are many newer Tweets featuring the keywords. Twitter's Dick Costolo says users will not see ads they don't find useful. The posts will have their promoting company in small type, but users will be able to spot them by their turning yellow when hovered over.

Businesses big or small will find Promoted Tweets empowering for managing their online reputation, as they'll get the final say in all the small-talk about them. Promoted Tweets will also allow businesses to post a positive comment which won't get lost in a sea of negativity. If there are lots of negative reviews about a movie, for example, a business can post a more favourable Promoted Tweet which will always stay on top. As Mashable's Anthony Mayfield says, if you can't delete, compete! Do this by "crowding out" the embarrassing or negative feedback and making sure that you are the first and most authoritative source of info about yourself for people to find. Twitter's new revenue-raising agenda will help businesses grow a thicker skin and capitalise on Twitter's valuable viral capabilities.

More on Twitter, they've also agreed to aquire Atebits, a start-up responsible for the Tweetie apps on Macs and iPhones. It's the first step towards Twitter providing their own mobile and desktop clients, which in the past have been built solely by outside developers. Twitter will start offering Tweetie for free, rebranding it Twitter for iPhone. Twitter has said that it will consider some sort of advertising in the near future. These are big steps for Twitter, who in the past have focused all their attention to the usability of their website alone. Now, with Promoted Tweets and Twitter for iPhone, we'll start getting a feel of more integrated social marketing from Twitter.

Another big step in the last couple of days, is Microsoft's release of their own brand of phones called "Kin". The phone currently has two models, which are targeted towards younger users and social networkers. Dubbing them "Sociologists", Microsoft is making it all about generation Y - users who share photos on Facebook, blog a lot, and check up on their friends via mobile. Everything on these phones seems to be photo-based - even your contact list looks like a collage of all your friends. It will be interesting to note how businesses will cash in on Microsoft's new project, and also to see if businesses utilise Twitter's Promoted Tweets. In these early days of the two ventures, it's a good idea to start from the ground up when thinking about online network-building marketing strategies for your business.