Twitter announced Tuesday that it is introducing advertising by allowing companies to pay to have their messages show up first in searches on its site.
The debut of “Promoted Tweets” comes as Twitter increasingly faces questions about how it can turn its wide usage into profits.
The ads apparently won’t bring in much money during the experimental phase of Twitter’s commercial push.
Virgin America, one of the advertisers that Twitter invited to test the concept, isn’t paying for its first burst of promotional messages, according to Porter Gail, the airline’s vice president of marketing.
“I would expect that it would turn into a paid model in the future,” Gail said. Twitter said Best Buy Co., Sony Pictures and Starbucks Corp. are among the other advertisers using Promoted Tweets.
Associated Press
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