Twitter Will Give You Advertweets From Accounts You Don't Follow

Corporations get to tweet all day at customers who follow them on Twitter, but have had trouble reaching those who don’t sign up to be spammed by their 140-character offers. Twitter has solved the problem by pledging to push ad-generated tweets to accounts that don’t follow the advertiser, targeting users based on an “interest graph” generated from the list of accounts they do follow.

VentureBeat reports Twitter CEO Dick Costolo shared the news at a breakfast meeting Thursday:

“We’re expanding Promoted Tweets. You’ll start seeing them from companies you don’t follow. We’ve been super cautious about that, we didn’t want to sacrifice user experience.”

Costolo promises users will be seeing “the kind of content you’re already interested in.”

This means everybody wins. Twitter can presumably charge higher rates, businesses get to advertise to customers who would love their messages if only they realized they should be following them, and customers get even more of what they’re already interested in.

Of course, there’s also a chance that the advertising clutters up users’ feeds, making them resentful of both Twitter and the advertisers, causing everyone to lose.

Twitter will start serving you promoted tweets from accounts you don’t follow [VentureBeat]

Previously: Twitter Pushes Ad-Generated Tweets To Tops Of Feeds

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