Twitter, based in California and valued at over 1bn has rolled out their plan for ‘promoted tweets’. The move is in a bid to honour its 1bn valuation as it so far does not make any money. So far, in the four years it s been running, Twitter has managed to resist any move towards traditional advertising, claiming they are looking to build value before profit.

The new ‘promoted tweets’ are an unconventional service that co-founder, Biz Stone describes as “ordinary tweets that businesses and organisations want to highlight to a wider group of users”.

To keep the natural feel of Twitter, the executives insist the tweets “resonate with users”, only allowing tweets to remain present if they are retweeted and replied to in order to prevent a spam effect. Initially, the tweets will appear at the top of search results like Google ’sponsored links’ but a second development will see them integrated into the feeds of individual users.

There are thousands of companies that have made successful use of twitter but a handful of large international firms have really created ROI. Starbucks has primarily used Twitter as a promotional tool but also a platform for customer service. It has been hugely successful in promoting customer interaction and relationships with the brand.

There was a great amount of negativity surround the Starbucks brand as it forced it’s overpriced coffee down the throats of every high street consumer. A Coffee shop on ever street corner was the part of the company motto and their thirst for monopolisation had damaging effects. By using twitter the company has been able to be more personal with their customers and the new promoted tweets should allow them to target their promotions at relevant consumers with high conversion rate.

Many experts have already predicted that a successful use of the promoted tweets would see companies like Starbucks offer discounts and promotions to users who retweet their messages, thus making use of the word-of-mouth effect that currently exists on Twitter.

Starbucks have also begun to offer discount to customer who bring their own mugs rather than using disposable cups in a bid to tackle their environmental impact.