One of my favorite Twitter features, besides its thank-God-they-capped-it 140 character per tweet limit (nothing is worse than a Facebook update that blurs the lines between a tweet and a bona fide blog--Mom, if you're reading this, you're guilty of status-blogs) is its search function.  You can never go wrong when searching for trending topics with hashtags like #letsbehonest, #somethingaintright, or, my personal favorte, #nowthatsghetto (as in: "Captain Crunch and tap water... #nowthatsghetto") Hey, even if it lacks a certain sophistication, pop culture can be comically perceptive...

After sites like YouTube and [dinosaur] MySpace sold for hundreds of millions of dollars with no clear plan to capiatalize on their every-person-on-earth traffic count figures, it was only a matter of time before people started pointing the finger at Twitter: "How you gonna make money?" Or, even better: "#somethingaintright about the fact u can't make money.. whens it gonna happen?"  Of course, Twitter could respond to these inquisitive folks with "#letsbehonest, we're not entirely sure" But, Twitter, perhaps sensing these questions would begin rolling in at exponential rates as they continued to exist pennilessly in a very profit-hungry world (a lá YouTube), unveiled a plan for revenue generation: paid search.

So... will your Twitter searches for things like #theresnothinglike be hijacked a bit by paid search results?  Alas, yes, they will; but hey, that's something we're used to, right? I mean, you've used Google within the past 13 years haven't you? And it's actually not results but rather result.  A single paid ad will appear at the top of tweets on your searched topic.  As MediaBuyerPlanner recently reported, Starbucks is the first advertiser to jump on board with
what Twitter is calling 'Promoted Tweets' by bidding on particular keywords they wager Tweeps will search for. [Hint: It's technically very similar to Google's ad words and the basis for my unoriginal blog title] 

It remains to be seen whether a tactic like this can produce results in the context of a social media platform as unique as Twitter.  The biggest question, as the article indicates, is whether or not Promoted Tweets will be any more effective for Starbucks then their regular tweets that speak directly to their followers. 

This all comes at a time when Twitter really started unlocking its potential in the retail marketing, franchise marketing, and product launch marketing (when news of the iPad dropped, some of the most hilarious tweets I'd ever read surfaced, including one from a woman asking "do you think they'll eventually make an #iPad with wings?" ...Get it? Pretty sure Sarah Silverman tweeted that...) space--tweets concerning one-day freebies like Denny's Free Grand Slam Breakfast promotion have paid off big.  Or did they? Measuring Twitter's impact, from tweet, to tweep acting on that tweet, has been understandably difficult.   Obviously, these Promoted Tweets should offer something a bit more measurable.  In the meantime, we'll get used to yet another one of our beloved 'free' sites entering a cocoon of profit analysts and emerging with a thin, almost undetectable layer of advertising...  Damn, and I JUST knocked those translucent ribbons of fluff at the bottom of all my YouTube videos off my #thingsihate list!   

FYI:
Tweet = a Twitter status update
Trending Topics = terms that are the most-tweeted about for that day
Hashtags = the # that prefaces a popular term and helps it to "trend"
Tweeps = twitter-ers or twitter peeps