Twitter’s Promoted Accounts Now Live

As was rumored last week, Twitter has formally introduced its latest advertising option: Promoted Accounts.

Promoted Accounts will show up in the “Who to follow” section of a Twitter home page, and is fully algorithmic in deciding when and which promoted accounts to display. According to the company’s announcement, what and when you might see promoted accounts being suggested depends on who’s advertising and who you’re following:

When an advertiser promotes an account, Twitter’s algorithm looks at that account’s followers and determines other accounts that those users tend to follow. If a user follows some of those accounts, but not the advertiser’s account, then Twitter may recommend the advertiser’s Promoted Account to that user. For example, a lot of people who follow several gaming-related accounts also follow @xbox. If someone follows gaming-related accounts, but not @xbox, Twitter may recommend @xbox to that person.

While last week’s reports suggested that Promoted Accounts would be open to business and individual advertisers, Twitter says that only “a handful of companies” are involved in the program right now. Twitter has typically rolled out new products like this very slowly, and this appears to be no exception.

In related news, Twitter says that its other two ad products — Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends — are now being syndicated to “a select number of partners.” HootSuite is the first partner to highlight Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends, and others will follow, Twitter says.