Twitter Experiments With Selling Ad Space In “Following” Lists

Facebook has features like sponsored posts and promoted posts which are basically posts paid by users/companies to appear in your News Feed to entice you to click it. Well it looks like Twitter could be considering something similar of their own. According to a report from Marketing Land, it seems that Twitter has been experimenting with selling ad space in a user’s following list.

The following list basically shows you who that particular user follows, and Twitter is apparently thinking about selling ad space in there. This was also noticed by William Shatner who discovered that he was following MasterCard on Twitter when he wasn’t. Shatner also realized that Dwayne Johnson’s Twitter account also followed MasterCard, even though Johnson’s account had only one “following” count.

Ironically enough this ad also extended to MasterCard’s rival, Visa, where it was similarly discovered that Visa’s Twitter account also featured MasterCard under their following list. As Shatner points out, by following these companies, it is implied that he endorses them which in some cases might not be true.

That being said, Twitter has since taken down those ads from the accounts mentioned, but the social network has yet to confirm or acknowledge these promoted follows. In the meantime what do you guys think/feel about it?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Twitter