The Twitter IPO
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Yesterday, Twitter -- the now ubiquitous social network -- filed its IPO to become a publicly-traded company.
As part of this filing, Twitter had to release information for the first time on how many people use the service (215 million users) and how much money it is making... or rather, losing (net losses of $79 million in 2012 and losses so far this year of $69 million).
Also revealed (but not a tremendous surprise): most of Twitter's revenue comes from selling online advertising:
Twitter only formally started selling ads in April 2010, about six months after Costolo joined the company, originally as chief operating officer. But those were basically tests, and Twitter only generated $7.3 million in ad revenue that year. The next year, that number leapt to $77.7 million, and last year Twitter’s ad salesforce generated $269.4 million. This year, the company may come close to doubling last year’s number: In the first half of 2013, Twitter sold more than $221 million worth of ads.
Have you seen promoted tweets on Twitter? What do you think of them? Given what you know about Twitter and other social networks, what do you think Twitter's long-term prospects are compared to Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+?
Comments & Feedback
I have definitely been a victim of promoted tweets on Twitter. I'm pretty sure that in order for this idea to work that they need to keep track of personal customer data like Facebook does. I do not want to keep seeing Fifty Shades of Grey ads or ads for Walmart. I would rather personally see Thor 2 ads or Masterpiece theater. Twitter could work like this, but honestly I think it's playing catch-up to Facebook.
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I honestly don't really notice too many of the promoted tweets on Twitter. After reading this post I did go check twitter and sure enough they were there. I must just look them over as I am scrolling through the tweets. But in terms of its long-term prospects I think that the advertising might get to be too much. I know a lot of my friends and colleagues complain all the time about how much advertising has taken over Facebook. I fear that Twitter will stand to be equally bothersome to social media users if they continue to sell more ads/ promoted tweets. I am aware that this is how they make money and hopefully they will be able to integrate these tweets in a seemless fashion as to not distrupt the content I really want to see.