The New York Times reported in this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/technology/internet/13twitter.html?ref=media) that Twitter is going to begin selling ad space to companies to make money. Much like Google, the inventors of Twitter have made a product that millions of people use, and now are trying to figure out how to make money out of it. Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, the founders of Twitter have seen their business grow exponentially since its creation in 2007. These ads will be significantly different then many of the other popular social networking sites on the internet. While sites like Facebook have the company ads appear on the side of the page with really no system concerning what ads will appear when, Twitter will be much different. The article describes these new ads like this, “The ads will let businesses insert themselves into the stream of real-time conversation on Twitter to ensure their posts do not get buried in the flow.”
This allows the companies a lot more control of where their ad is seen, and by who. The article gives the example of Starbucks being able to place their ad at the top of conversation streams concerning Starbucks or coffee. This can also be used if there is a negative response to a product, such as a movie. If there are a bunch of negative posts the company can slip their ad at the top of the stream and try to shift the public opinion. The advertisers know that the magic bullet theory does not apply here. Bernardo Huberman says this about the idea of influence people with the ads on Twitter. “Our study shows that the influence of those tweets was minimal compared to the conversation that people were having about those movies... Media like Twitter and Facebook are so enormous that it’s very hard to imagine it would be easy to manipulate the conversation.” Twitter is prepared for this and says they will monitor the effects of the ads and charge the advertisers accordingly. If the company posts are not clicked on or changing people's opinion then the cost will be minimum. If the ads are effective then the company will have to pay.
What we are seeing with this new development is a combination of many media issues. The two major ones are seeing media as a business and the affect media has on people. Advertisers are always trying to find new a subtle ways to reach people using media. With this new development on Twitter they have found one of the most subtle ways yet. If they appear on the conversation stream, to the normal user they seem like just another person adding their opinion. This way the company can subtly advertise without people seeing it as an add with an agenda. This goes back to the theory that position leaders and people that you interact with will have a much better chance at selling a product than an ad ever will. When it comes to the money these companies are paying it seems like they have reached a great deal with Twitter. If their ad is affective then they have to pay for it. If the ad is not affective then they don't have to pay. This is a good situation for both parties. Twitter has become such a phenomenon that putting ads up on it will not hurt the internet traffic on it, and because of the low risk of advertising on Twitter, everyone will want to put their ads up on Twitter.
Jason
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