Twitter Encourages Self-Promotion.....For A Price
Does your follower count look low? Twitter might be able to help you attract more followers- for a price. Sources have told All Things Digital that Twitter is now considering a new revenue generating feature which could see users increase their follower numbers significantly.While details have not been finalized, the sources did reveal that the feature would be along the lines of a 'Promoted Tweeters' area, highlighting specific users for the purpose of bumping their follower counts.This seems to be a change in company philosophy, seeing as Twitter has previously expressed disapproval of follower gaining services like TweetUp, which allows users to artificially promote themselves and build their follower base. Perhaps TweetUp's recent successful funding round, and its adoption by major sites like TechCrunch, has shown Twitter what it may be missing out on.Twitter already has a free promoted user list, which compromises of suggestions by the public of Twitter accounts for their expertise in areas like technology, entertainment, and politics. These suggested users are displayed prominently in random a order on the Twitter homepage, along with their latest updates.
Here at the SMNZ office we took some time to discuss what this new pay-to play service could look like. Our consensus was that it is likely to be similar to the current Featured Trends system, and will have the tweets of the paying user highlighted inline in Twitter streams. We can also imagine that there will be a new sidebar area where Twitter users who have purchased promotions will be displayed to other Twitter users in the same area or country.
Our futurist predictions aside, this new revenue generating feature is likely to be more obtrusive than the "Featured Trends" feature. It will be interesting to see how users react to a potential commercialization of their service. How would you react to a promoted tweet in your Twitter stream? Would you take advantage of this service ? What kind of a price range would you expect? We would love your thoughts.[Watch this space: We will keep you updated as more announcements are made about this possible purchased promotion feature.]