You may know that Twitter is experimenting with paid advertisement. One of its program is called Promoted Tweet ! A clear indication that paid media is encroaching into earned media space.
Most social media mavens and users like to emphasize the importance of earned media (compared to paid media). But one does not need to look beyond one’s twitter search screens to see how paid media is slowly and surely infiltrating into the realm of social media. See an example of promoted tweet on the right.
Yesterday, for the first time I noticed how one particular promoted tweet was on top an active search hashtag (#FOM10). I am not sure what measures other than impressions (& # of mentions, RTs etc) folks at @mangoosemetcis are tracking for their own “promoted tweet.”
For all social media watchers, Promoted Tweets program by Twitter is worth following, no pun intended here ! To find out more about the program go here.
My perspective: I think we will a lot more encroachment by paid advertisers into the earned media space. As long as Twitter and its partners can maintain a low noise level for its users from paid advertisers most users, like me, will not mind it. Personally I am very interested to see how Twitter can tweak their ad. display relevancy model to make these PTs relevant enough to the search result. Greater relevancy is definitely going to drive RTs and more actions with PTs.
Epilogue:
After I writing this post, I noticed another interesting post on PTs here
Posted by Jijesh 
