Twitter Sells "Trending Topics" To Advertisers

destinyland writes "Twitter's 'Promoted Tweets' platform already allows advertisers to insert ads directly into its users' Twitter feeds. But advertisers will soon also be able to purchase spaces in the 'Trending Topics' area of Twitter. The space reserved for tracking topics seeing the most discussion will be sold for 'thousands of dollars a day,' according to advertisers who've been approached by Twitter, and while it could be a real cash cow for the service, some users argue that Twitter 'risks ruining the site if it lets the pursuit of profit interfere with the organic nature of the social network.'"

Comments

I mean, Jesus. wtf.

[David Gerard]

If they're going to sell ads, why not sell ads that look like ads? Why do they have to mess around with insinuating them into the service?

I mean, I pay nothing to post on Twitter. Put an ad in the corner. I promise not to run away.

They've been doing it

[Statecraftsman]

Twitter has been manipulating their trending topics for a while now. In the past they've added big live events like sports contests to their trending topics when, in my analysis, those topics simply weren't trending. How do I know? I spent some time trying to build a long-term trending topics list using the public_timeline feeds. There were obvious items there that were underrepresented in the actual tweets. They should label these "sponsored topics" as such.