Twitter Expected to Allow Ads Soon

March 3, 2010 — -- Get ready to see some ads on your favorite micro-blogging site.

Twitter, the service with which you "tweet" by sending micro-messages of no more than 140 characters to your "followers" was founded in 2006 but really started to gain traction outside of the techie crowd in late 2008. Almost everyone has heard of Twitter, even though most are not sure what you really do with it. Twitter has about 27 million users (about 19 percent of the adults using the Internet). The majority of users post very short messages about what they are doing, about to do or thinking at the time they are tweeting. They also post links so you can get more information. When used this way Twitter adds immediacy to social media and further connects users.

Twitter has had several phases of growth fueled by news events or adoption by celebrities. About half of Fortune 500 companies have Twitter accounts. Many accounts have been opened in anticipation of being able to gain followers who might be able to be converted into consumers one day. So it is with great anticipation that the advertising community awaits the announcement by Twitter about how they will structure their advertising platform. An announcement is expected sometime in the next few weeks.

We don't know a lot about exactly how Twitter will serve ads to its users. But here is what we do know: Twitter does not consider itself a Web site but rather an open platform. It gives developer's access to its API (Application Programming Interface) and they in turn develop all kinds of widgets, Web sites, applications and other projects that interact with Twitter.

Twitter ads will probably be served when a user initiates a search. Let's say, for instance, you initiate a search inside of Twitter for a popular movie you would like to see. This could generate an ad promoting The Academy Awards on ABC. This will only show up in a search so someone using their Twitter account to write messages would not be served an ad. The ad would be in Twitter's 140 characters or less format.

Twitter is expected to work with advertising agencies and media companies in the beginning but much like Google, will allow anyone to visit their site and negotiate to use the service. Twitter also shows up in a lot of different places embedded into Web sites and applications. Twitter is expected to share revenue with any of those services who display the ads.