Twitter, meet paid advertising. Paid advertising, Twitter. 
Twoogel launched today – it’s a Google powered search engine for Twitter, complete with, you guessed it, PPC ads provided by Google.
( @Twoogle is a third party site that’s not directly affiliated with either Google or Twitter – simply using the technology provided by both to create an integrated search experience.)The mix of paid advertising with Twitter search results is interesting. Seach.twitter.com doesn’t include paid ads to Web sites or other landing pages – just search results full of tweets. It’s possible that if a page full of positive tweets about your company comes up in search results, and next to it there’s a paid advertisement directing people to your landing page for a free trail or coupon or whatever, they might be more inclined to click on that ad secure in the knowledge that other Twitterites seem to like you. At the same time, a page full of negative tweets might be just as equally detrimental.
Users may have a different reaction to it – why use Twoogle when other twitter search engines provide social elements (trending topics, tag clouds, sentiment, etc) and all Twoogle has are ads? Ads aren’t a big attraction for users. I think Twoogle will have to step up in those areas in order to get a significant amount of search traffic in order to support their paid ad model.
Time will tell whether a service like this takes off with users or not, but in a way it’s a logical extension of the same old “how will Twitter make money” argument. One of the ideas put forward has been including paid advertising space on the network, on search results, on profiles, anywhere. It seems that instead of waiting for Twitter to make a move like this on their own, someone else has harnessed the power of Twitter with the money making ability of Google ads and made their own search engine.
I’d predict that if it does take off, either Google or Twitter (or both) will take notice and integrate a similar idea into their own search sites.
Thoughts? Like it, don’t like it, don’t care? Leave a comment and let me know!
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You raise an interesting point, I’m actually surprised Twitter hasn’t added ads to their search pages already, but I’m sure it’s been talked about.
I think Twoogel’s concept is pretty cool. Seems like a basic, no frills search for Twitter, which for people like me is a nice alternative to all the “tricked-up” Twitter searches that keep popping up.