(
)
In a bid to turn its social media hit into a moneymaker, Twitter is teaming with a host of marketers, such as Starbucks, Virgin and Best Buy, to introduce in-stream ads to its users’ timelines.
The move was met with consternation by some Twitter fans, who are used to the social media service’s being a commercial-free environment.
While Twitter said in April it would begin serving up ad messages that it termed, “Promoted Tweets,” those promotions have been extremely discreet and only show up when a consumer searches on a phrase like “coffee shops.”
These ads appear in the series of scrolling updates from Twitter users, though they will be relevant to user’s interests, the company said yesterday.
Twitter, is a micro-blogging service that works with a 140-character limit.
Users choose to follow certain people based on certain common interests.
Twitter to date has around 175 million subscribers. It has more users internationally than in the US. According to comScore’s September data, Twitter.com counted 23.9 million unique visitors domestically and 101.9 million worldwide.
Those figures don’t include people accessing the site through third-party applications.
Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds but, like Facebook, is still trying to figure out the most appropriate way to draw advertisers into the mix.
Last month, Twitter’s CEO, Evan Williams, swapped places with COO Dick Costolo in order to give the reins to someone with more management expertise.
In August, the company also brought on a chief revenue officer, Adam Bain, who joined from News Corp., parent of The Post.