Twitter jumps into selling trillions of tweets to companies

Twitter is said to be aggregating trillions of tweets from the its site and is sorting and sifting through innumerable conversations, following ideas and opinions of its 288 million users. This is all for the sole purpose to search for commercial opportunities, says a report by The Guardian. Twitter’s Data Strategy Chief Chris Moody has a vision for the future. It involves companies surprising their customers in ways which they cannot imagine. The report gives us an example in which a passenger is boarding the plane to visit his grandchild and when he just arrives to his seat, he finds a gift-wrapped rattle with a note from the airline. Also, the cabin-crew congratulates him on the arrival of a new member in the family. Moody wants this phenomena to be an everyday occurrence which can only be made possible if Twitter is listening to us. Selling data is a small part of Twitter’s overall income and it has big plans to increase it as well. Beginning of last year, Twitter had  introduced #DataGrants pilot program, with the goal of giving a handful of research institutions access to Twitter’s public and historical data. Chris Moody said that a question which he is frequently asked is, “How do we ensure that we are not being creepy?” Context, he believes, is the key. He adds that Twitter gives a fascinating ability to understand people in context like they have never been able to do before. But the report points an important question that is, do all Twitter users imagine they are addressing the world or the corporations that want to listen in to their conversations. Moody says that, “You bring your data to us and we will ensure that your customers, if they exist on Twitter – we can provide advertisements to them. It’s done in a completely anonymised fashion, so we are not sharing private information.” It assures that Twitter will not share the content of direct messages (DMs) which are hidden from everyone except the sender and recipient. In this manner, Twitter can match its users to a company’s database of customers to provide targeted advertising along with profiles being matched using emails. For example, When Apple will release their new phone this year, Samsung could listen in on to Twitter to help it single out customers who are thinking of ditching Apple and opting for their brand. This way, Samsung will be able to identify phone features which most attract them and use that information to design their devices and target real-time advertising too.