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Dell Makes $3 Million From Twitter Sales

Posted by kdawson on from the tweet-deals dept.

Barence writes "Dell has admitted to raking in over $3 million from advertising its products on Twitter. The PC maker has been using Twitter for two years, and employs proprietary software to track sales from users clicking through from Twitter links. Of that $3 million, the company claims that $1 million was made in the past six months, following an explosion in Twitter's popularity. (Here is an analysis indicating that 72.5% of Twitter users joined in 2009.) The majority of sales have come through the @DellOutlet account, which posts six to ten special offers a week — with at least half of these being Twitter exclusives. Though the $3 million is a drop in the bucket given Dell's $12.3 billion in revenue during the first quarter of this year, it further bolsters Twitter's case for charging businesses."

4 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Twitter for twits? by Paleolibertarian · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry. I couldn't resist!

  2. Re:And twitter makes...? by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's web 2.0.
    Who cares about profits?

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  3. I'm one of those @Outlet buyers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let me clue you in. People that shop at the outlet are cheap bastards. We scour the web for dell coupons, and then buy second hand stuff to save a couple of bucks. We couldn't care less were we have to scour for that information.. Dell should just save us the trouble and put the information here www.dell.com/coupons. In fact Twitter should pay Dell for driving the traffic to Twitter.

  4. Doesn't really justify Twitter. by owlnation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So what? Dell has effective marketing people. Why is this news?

    They are simply milking an overhyped communication medium, one where there are doubtless many easily influenced and gullible users -- their gullibility being the reason they are using Twitter in the first place.

    Twitter made nothing from this. Twitter makes nothing at all -- other than an enormous amount of hot air. Sure, companies like Dell should ride the gravy train while it's still on the tracks, but it won't last. just like it didn't with Myspace, AOL, Facebook etc, etc, etc...

    And if anything else, the more companies using Twitter to market themselves the even less cool and useful Twitter will be to the few who use it. It will die faster.

    They are still bleeding more users than they retain, this kind of thing will only make it worse.