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"Earlier this week, there had been reports of ads appearing on the twitter.com sidebar, but these new Firefox ad/messages spotted by Friendfeed user Alphaxion are without question the most prominent ad placements yet.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTechcrunch has also reported that some users had spotted the Firefox message above their streams. According to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone however:\r\n&amp;quot;This is not an advertisement and it\u2019s not just for one browser\u2014it\u2019s customized based on which browser you\u2019re currently using.&amp;quot;\r\nThe ads/reminders are however appearing on multiple browsers from IE through to Safari, and not only that - but are reappearing a few refreshes later.\u00A0It might very well be that the message is merely that, a reminder, and as Chris Sacca has reportedly indicated, its merely a matter of Twitter not being able to detect what browser the visitor is actually using.\r\n\r\nWe're more likely to believe Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal:\r\ngive it 6 months before ads start showing up in the exact same place\u2013maybe even linked to the #hashtags you\u2019ve clicked on. Oh wait, you didn\u2019t realize that Twitter made #hashtags clickable, so it could track your interests?&amp;quot;\r\nThese are most likely a way to test engagement levels before deciding whether or not to fully integrate the ads.\u00A0What I don't understand is why, just as they were earlier with the sidebar ads, Twitter (and many other web companies) are so coy about potential new ad placements. The company has to start earning at some point and whether its through ads or confirmed reports of analytics tools being made available to business users...lets just hope that Twitter does what it needs to do to stick around without destroying it core selling point, its simplicity."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/2009/07/09/breaking-prominent-twitter-ads-spotted/>