Well, it had to happen at some stage. With Facebook currently sitting on top of the pile with a market capitalisation over US$200 million and earnings this year of US$3.2 billion, eventually Twitter was going to have to try and find a way to harness the incredible pile of data it has accumulated over the last six years.

How much data? Well, in terms of the traditional, simple 140-characters-or-less model that defines the ‘microblog’, it is estimated that 500 million are sent every day. That’s a huge amount of data that instantly tracks trends and market shifts.

A ten-fold increase in revenue since 2010 certainly shows that the little birdies are flying in the right direction, but with almost 270 million active account holders, advertising was always going to be the main method that Twitter could derive and income.

That time is now with the release of Twitter for Business. This is long way form the cringe-worthy ‘promoted tweets’ that appeared a few years ago. In this instance, Twitter is aggregating user date to ensure your Tweet appears in front of a highly targeted age, sex and collection of interests.

One of the truly delicious offerings is the ability to target the Followers of your competitors. Brilliant! Without laboriously making friends or grabbing the handles of all the thousands of people following someone else in your industry, a simple click of a button you can put your Tweet (along with a message or product shot) into all their feeds instantaneously.

Of course, Twitter present everything in real time, so you always run the risk of users not logging on and missing your tweet altogether. Still, at least you know it’s in there somewhere.

There are plenty of other options, including paying to promote a Trend or strategies to increase your followers. You may even just want to target users in Canberra who are within a certain age bracket. All the options are available… at a price. So, if you want to be part of the conversation, head on over to learn more via the link below.

Via Twitter