Twitter, at long last, put ads in its stream today. Predictably, people are angry! But that’s just dumb. It’s good for Twitter, and it’s good for you. The basic idea is that short form ads, which it calls Promoted Tweets, will now appear in your timeline. They’ll only appear from companies you follow. So, for example, if you follow Virgin America, you may see one of its Promoted Tweets. If you don’t, you won’t. You can banish them with just a click. It’s quite smart and unobtrusive. Which hasn’t stopped a lot of reactions from people who are threatening to quit or wondering if this will be the end of Twitter. Nonsense! Nonsense and poppycock. The only thing that kind of sucks about ads in Twitter is that they haven’t been there since the get go. Twitter should have introduced ads back in 2008, before it totally tipped but after it was apparent that it was going to be a media force. The only reason people are resistant to timeline ads is because they are new.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=108962