How Twitter’s Changes Can Be Profitable for Your Business

September 24, 2010 by Douglas Idugboe 
 
Twitter is changing for good. With a host of business-centric features lined up for release, the world's most popular micro-blogging site looks all set to turn your business into a vibrant green of cash.
While the most noticeable change in the updated user interface, there are several other new features which will entice users to spend more time on the site thereby making it even more powerful and effective for advertising and marketing.

To top it all, Twitter's cash cow idea of offering "Promoted Tweets" might finally see the light of the day. IMO, promoted tweets represents a very interesting concept with massive business potential. Don't believe me? Read on.
What are promoted tweets?
Promoted Tweets lets advertisers purchase keywords and select tweets that appear on top of Twitter search results. It's analogous to how "sponsored results" are shown on top of the page in Google Search.
Searching is one of the most heavily used features of Twitter so I'm confident that this strategy to offer promoted tweets is liable to bring in good results.
Promoted Tweets has massive business potential for advertising and marketing. Let's consider the case of celebrities like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber who have a massive fan following on Twitter. In this case, promoted tweets can be used to advertise their latest albums, merchandise or even sell tickets to their upcoming concerts.
 
The basic principle of promoted tweets is to build out interests based on who you're following and leverage that information for advertising purpose. Targeted ads have been a successful business model for Google as well as Facebook, so I'm certain that it will work just as well with Twitter's almost 160 million userbase.
Though Twitter launched promoted tweets in April this year, the concept is yet to pick up amongst the user community. Therefore, it's understandable that Twitter is now planning to revamp it in order to be more business-friendly.
Other Twitter Enhancements
I like the new two-column layout of "the New Twitter" – it uses the screen real estate much better and there are lesser redirections. The left side has the usual stream of tweets from people whom you follow and the right side fills up dynamically to display any pictures or videos embedded in tweets.
Therefore, even if the photos/ videos in your tweets are published on Flickr or Twitpic, you can actually view them without leaving Twitter. When there's no multimedia content in a tweet, the right pane shows the selected tweet in a larger format. In addition, it shows the most recent three tweets by that particular user.
 
Plus, the irritating "more" button has disappeared and the stream of tweets expands by itself as you scroll down the left pane. The "Search" box has been finally shifted to where it belongs to – top of the page.
Wrap-up
Twitter resisted the temptation of building a commercial model in 2006. However, given its phenomenal popularity amongst the business fraternity, Twitter is finally ringing in business-friendly changes to help businesses get the best out of world's most popular social network.

http://smedio.com/2010/09/24/1982