Twitter Essay

Submitted By notachance4u
Words: 1025
Pages: 5

Twitter, launched in 2006, revolutionized the social media industry by launching a never seen before microblogging platform to the public. Each consecutive quarter of user growth allowed Twitter to expand to many different demographics, therefore increasing their overall popularity. From 2010 to 2011, statistics show a 280% increase in average number of tweets per day from 50 million to an astonishing 150 million tweets. Currently, Twitter stands as a common form of pop culture and continues expand by approximately 460,000 new twitter accounts each day. Twitter is designed to permit all users to tweet an unlimited amount of 140 character pieces, entailing personal experiences, interests or anything else that pertains to themselves and others. Twitter engages user to user contact through mentions, and tags linking people with similar interests. Recently Twitter has emerged with a new system of engaging individuals and businesses into the twitter world as one cooperative unit, known as promoted tweets. Promoted tweets revolutionized the online advertisement industry for the following reason, “All Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad" in [the] Promoted Tweets platform that isn't already an organic part of Twitter.” (Twitter). Permiting users to interact with a promoted tweet as they would with a regular tweet, through retweeting or favoriting the specific tweet. Promoted tweets are displayed one at a time at the top of relevant search results, to ensure custom satisfaction and avoiding complaints. The process of promoting a tweet starts with any twitter account operated by a business. Promoted tweets are advertised to specific demographics that pertain to the item or service being promoted, maximizing effectiveness of the tweet. A business can take one of their regular tweets and pay to promote it, advancing the promoted tweets to the top of the related search results. “We'll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don't resonate.”(Twitter). As stated, to preserve consumer satisfaction, not all promoted tweets stay on the top of search results. The advantages of promoted tweets are far more advanced compared to various other forms of advertisement because of Twitters advanced knowledge on their consumers. “Twitter's commercials are different and have a leg up because they will be intermixed with incredibly time-sensitive content.” (Atlantic Wire). This knowledge assists Twitter with redirecting promoted tweets according to users geographic area, interests as well as who they are following. Resulting in maximizing the satisfaction of consumers and the profits of businesses funding the promoted tweets. Many consumers haven't even noticed the promoted tweets as out of the ordinary, some even find them useful and therefore are still content with Twitter’s services. Bogdan Becea shared his satisfaction with promoted tweets, “I have just encountered my first #promotedtweet and was actually interested in the link :)”(Bogdan Belcea). Businesses benefit equally if not more so than the consumers. They pay for promoted tweets that are directed to a hand picked demographic of consumers oriented around similar interests of their promoted product. “Virgin had its fifth largest sales day ever due to a Twitter campaign.”(Social Beat). Overall, all sides of the deal are content with the outcome resulting in Twitter producing higher revenue through promoted tweet sales and being able to dismiss angry users with an option to dismiss promoted tweets from their timeline. Minimal negative feedback has been received regarding Twitters promoted tweets. Complaints have been vocalized on Twitter as well as current news articles or consumer blogs. “Stop the #promotedtweets, @Twitter. Anytime I see a #promotedtweet in my feed I instantly block the sender.” (Sarah K Unger). Besides the regular naysayers of advertising on Twitter many are irritated because of the