Soon, the only tweets that don’t have ads might be from birds. On Thursday, microblogging site Twitter announced it will allow advertisements in the tweet streams sent by its more than 45 million users.
The two-year-old company revised its terms of service so that short, 140-character messages may now “include advertisements, which may be targeted to the content or information on the services, queries made through the services, or other information.”
‘Door Open’
The company said it is “leaving the door open for exploration in this area, but we don’t have anything to announce.”
Brad Shimmin, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said a key question is which model the company intends to use.
“One model,” he said, “could be the Google model, where ads are part of the user interface” on, for example, the Web page where the tweets are displayed. The other model, which he prefers, are ads that run in the tweet stream itself.
While Twitter has been mum about how advertising might be implemented, its executives have previously stated a dislike of banner ads. Shimmin said he hopes Twitter takes the stream-based model, but noted that “it doesn’t sound like they’ve worked it out yet.”
He said the big issue with the stream-based model is how the ads might work, given that some clients, such as the Tweetie client for Mac that he uses, insert their own ads.
Train Hasn’t ‘Left the Station’
It’s possible that Twitter might seek to create a client, such as an Adobe Air-based one, to replace many of the third-party clients out there. Shimmin said he has wondered why Twitter hasn’t done that yet, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised to see that happen. But, he said, at the moment it “doesn’t look like that train has left the station.”
Although the popular service has some issues…