Twitter.com founder, Biz Stone, yesterday announced on the Twitter blog that the company was unveiling ‘promoted tweets’ as a means of monetising the popular 140 character service, with initial partners including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America, with ‘promoted tweets’ by these companies set to appear in search pages on the social networking site.
A study of 1,219 people was conducted to gain feedback about the tweeted advertisements by city deal website, www.Groupola.com, and has found that initial feelings about the marketing move are not positive.
One quarter, 24%, of UK Twitter users said they were ‘happy’ with the move, compared to 68% that said they were unhappy with the fact their Twitter experience would start to include commercial tweets. The remaining 8% said they were interested to see how the commercial inclusion would play out.
Despite the number of users that said they were unhappy with promoted tweets, when asked the question, “in what other ways, besides promoted tweets would Twitter be able to monetise?”, 74% of Brits admitted that they ‘didn’t know’.
17% said they thought Twitter could monetise by having the site ‘sponsored’
Mark Pearson, Managing Director of Groupola.com had the following to say,
“The Twitter team have clearly had some difficulty coming to terms with the fact that to survive, they have to monetise. It’s as simple as that.
“Twitter really is the media’s social networking darling, and for something this big to have been valued at $1bn and go on existing without some form of revenue stream is unwise and has been baffling for all other entrepreneurs.”
He continued,
“I believe this could work out very well for Twitter, and should help the investors start to see a return on their money. As with any change, there will be resistance for a short period of time, but I think the level of loyalty Twitter users show will soon outweigh the negativity surrounding the move.
“From an online business perspective, it will be extremely interesting to see how well the initial brands fare through their promoted tweets, as I could definitely see the idea of promoting our daily city-specific deals through Twitters as a viable marketing option to aid in the promotion of group buying discounts.”
Groupola.com works because of ‘group buying power’, a new-to-the-UK way to save money, that will give users the ability to save money on restaurants, spa days, beauty and hairdressing, experience days, sport and leisure activities, theatre, concerts and much more.
LINK http://www.Groupola.com
ENDS
For more information, please contact Rich Leigh, 10 Yetis Public Relations Agency on 01452 348 211, rich@10yetis.co.uk or on Twitter @goodandbadpr
EDITORS NOTES
Overnight, Groupola.com became the biggest Group Buying Power website in the UK when it launched in February
Groupola.com operates in 8 of the largest cities across the UK, including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh.
Mark Pearson, MD of MyVoucherCodes is a regular media contributor regarding online shopping and the credit crunch. At 29 his personal worth is more than £30 million. Mark was previously a trainee chef working for Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, London.
MyVoucherCodes has had sales exceeding £481m in the last year
Consumer savings on online shopping via MyVoucherCodes.co.uk up from £28m in 2008 to £52m in 2009.
