Microblogging site Twitter has announced that it to start carrying advertising, in the form of 'promoted tweets'.
The advertising programme will be rolled out to between 2% and 10% of users via search on Twitter.com from today.
'Promoted Tweets are ordinary tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users,' said Twitter spokesperson Sean Garrett.
'Users will start to see tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages.'
Several companies will run ads, including Best Buy, Virgin America and Starbucks, the New York Times has reproted on its website.
The 2-1/2-year-old Internet start-up's short text messages or 'tweets' have become a global phenomenon and the service is used by millions of people every day.
'Twitter has great potential as a marketing and advertising channel with opportunities to create viral buzz around a product or service,' said Eden Zoller, analyst at technology research firm Ovum.
'The flip side of Twitter's immediacy is that if advertising messages are not very carefully positioned users can hit back at brands - and in real time, and brands will have little control over this.'
Twitter, a privately held company, does not report earnings, but its website says: 'While our business model is in a research phase, we spend more money than we make.'
