Is the Dickbar back?
Twitter is starting to gear up it’s advertising revenue by putting paid-for tweets into the middle of your Twitter stream. This will make itself shown in about the next 8 weeks or so. Twitter has made it plain that these promoted Tweets are no experiment – they won’t only appear in Twitter search or HootSuite like they have been over the past year. And they won’t be stuck over on the sides of Twitter.com the way that other promoted trends are. No – they will be here soon…they will be here to stay and – Twitter is pretty much going to make sure that we see them…they will stick them to the top of the page so no matter how far you scroll down the message will still be there.
Wait a minute…that sounds familiar – well that’s because it’s actually the self same idea that Twitter had for it’s iPhone app (remember – the Quick Bar –Frustrated by what many saw as invasive advertising, users dubbed it the “Dickbar” in reference to CEO Dick Costolo whom, as you might have guessed, is in charge of making Twitter profitable — and that includes making advertising products like Promoted Trends visible to users. The press has been quick to link its disappearance to the recent return of Twitter inventor and co-founder Jack Dorsey).
But one assumes that Twitter reckon that we will find Quick Bar less intrusive on the net. This is probably true when you consider the massive amounts of advertising that we are already exposed to on every page.
But – what this comes down to is; will we be convinced to buy the idea and perhaps push Twitter into profitability or will it die a death and leave Twitter wandering in the non-profitable wilderness. The site itself is only expected to gross $100 million this year – a lot of money by any terms but not much when compared to Facebooks $3.5 billion that it will rake in from display ads.