Last night I headed over to Twitter.com to check on the recent updates to my timeline. Near the top I noticed something a little different:
Subtle isn’t it? Just in case you missed it, here is the same screenshot with a highlight of the difference:
Twitter allowed Linode to inject an ad (effectively) into my timeline. In Twitterspeak this ad is called a ‘promotion’.
This isn’t new of course, Twitter has been talking about ads promoted tweets for months. This the first time I’ve ever seen it show up in my timeline though.
Twitter says these can show up in official apps as well, but when I looked my at timeline with the official Twitter iOS app I didn’t see the ad promoted tweet:
I have mixed feelings about Twitter injecting ads ‘promotions’ into my timeline. The promoted trends in the sidebar on Twitter.com weren’t a problem. They are clearly labeled as an ad promotion, making it easy to tell the difference between real trends and ads promotions. Most of the time I only scan my timeline, skipping the trending items entirely.
Timeline ads promotions are a different beast though. The visual difference is relatively small, making it easy to miss when scanning through tweets. If it had a clear visual difference (different background color?) I think it would be less annoying to me since I’d know what to avoid when scanning recent tweets in my timeline.
Despite having taken over $1.1 billion in funding there is little doubt that they’ll have to do something to increase real revenue. I can’t help but feel that my timeline is expected to be pure though, having ads promoted tweets inline with little visual distinction is a disappointment.