Watching Twitter roll out its ad-related products is almost like watching paint dry; it’s a very slooooow process. That’s to Twitter’s credit, perhaps, as the company is obviously being painstakingly delicate about introducing advertising into the service’s ecosystem.

Today, another small step: Twitter says it’s testing Promoted Tweets in the main Twitter timeline. But, of course, they’re doing it slowly and with some caveats:

1. The test is only happening for users of the HootSuite Twitter client.
2. Only some HootSuite users are part of the test.

Here are the details from Twitter’s blog post:

During this testing period with HootSuite, we will experiment with where and when Promoted Tweets are shown in the timeline. Not all HootSuite users will see Promoted Tweets and those who do may see different Promoted Tweets in different places in their timeline.

The same guidelines that Twitter announced before for Promoted Tweets continue to apply: They’ll only show up when Twitter determines that the tweet is relevant to the user, and that relevance is determined, in part, by who you follow.

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Advertising

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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