Today, Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab will interview Twitter CEO Evan Williams at SxSW. TechCrunch is poised to report—especially since they expect Twitter to unveil its advertising platform in the interview.
That’s not for certain, of course, but TC points to Twitter head of monetization Anamitra Banerji’s comment on Feb 27 that they’d have the platform ready “in a month or so.” (Two and a half weeks is apparently close enough.) They’ve put 2 and 2 together with GigaOM’s Matthew Ingram’s (Feb 23) report that Twitter is lining up major partners for a launch.
Twitter has long been excited over its coming ad offering. Back in November, founder Biz Stone insisted that “Everyone is going to love” their new advertising system. “It’s going to be amazing.”
A digital advertising format everyone will love? I’d certainly love to see that. Of course, I’m sure the guy who stands to make money off the ads thinks “everyone” will agree with him, since he loves the idea
. On the other hand, however, Business Week speculated back in December that 2009 might have actually seen a profit for Twitter, with its deals with Bing and Google—so maybe Twitter will focus on getting this right instead of just getting the next buck (I’m looking at you, Facebook).
What do you think? Will Twitter unveil its long-awaited ad platform today? And if so, what will it look like?













