Battle of the Tweets: TweetUp Vs. Twitter’s Promoted Tweets

A much talked about topic of the week is the Battle of the Tweets: two tweet-orientated ad platforms namely TweetUp versus Twitter’s own ad platform, ‘Promoted Tweets’. Launched within 24 hours of one another, the question is posed: ‘Who will tweet victorious?’

Set up by Bill Gross, pioneer of search advertising, TweetUp promises to place the best of the tweets ahead of ‘the noise’. The aim is to order the tweets according to their relevance on a given topic and popularity determined through retweets. TweetUp also favours those who tweet more about a topic over a longer length of time. Such users would rank higher in the stream than those tweeting less or for a shorter period. Therefore the entire stream is ranked in terms of relevance to a subject, regardless of whether this is a sponsored or normal tweet. In terms of search advertising, TweetUp can be used by third parties on websites via a widget featuring sponsored recommended Tweeters.

Limited (for now) to their own website, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets allow advertisers to appear at the top of results pages as sponsored links on a one-ad-at-a-time basis. This is followed by three of the most popular tweets and then the live stream which is ordered by the tweets made most recently rather than those most relevant. In spite of the Promoted Tweet’s prime position, the ad may be removed if users don’t interact enough with it through clicks and replies. It is planned that third parties will be able to integrate Promoted Tweets into their own sites within the future. Additionally, Twitter plan to allow ads to show within all tweeters’ streams, regardless of whether or not the user is interested in the company, service or product.

Both TweetUp and Promoted Tweets are currently only available on a cost-per-impression (CPI/CPM) basis. However, as noted by TechCrunch TweetUp may extend models to pay-per-new-follower and pay-per-click (PPC ). Whilst TweetUp is centring upon smaller businesses on a self-service basis, Twitter is targeting larger companies to invest in their Promoted Tweets. TweetUp certainly appears more useful for detecting the tweets that are most relevant to set topics, but from an advertising perspective and Twitter’s scope for extending their services with third parties Promoted Tweets are likely to soar.

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