Is Twitter The Next Big Advertising Medium?

TV Networks apparently have their eyes on Twitter as a new marketing strategy. According to the Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, MTV and NBC have started to experiment with the year-old service as a way to communicate with potential viewers and consumers. This seems like a potentially lucrative idea, considering that users are able to receive messages via SMS, IM, email or the Twitter website.

MTV personalities used the service to keep Twitterers updated about the MTV Music Awards directly from the red carpet and even after-parties. Fox used it for the hit show “24,” and ABC is using it for the new show ?Greek,? on its ABC Family channel. Even ESPN uses Twitter to send out sports updates to its subscribers. The aim of all of these strategies is give viewers an extra option of interacting with their favorite shows and to connect a larger online community to keep in contact with.

Twitter does seem to have a certain amount of usefulness commercially, explained in a blog post at The New York Times. Twitter is obviously easy to use and very cost-effective in a time when its all about cutting back costs. But, will marketers be able to implement it in a way that doesn't seem too intrusive and come across as blatant advertising? That would most definitely turn many users off. Also, Twitter must be accepted into a wider audience that includes more of the general public, much in the same way that Myspace has.

MocoNews notes that Twitter currently only has around 370,000 active users per month, which is barely enough to make a noticeable difference in viewership ranking for television shows. Will the networks be able to get those users to spread the word to friends and via other methods, such as social networks? What about through blogs?

It will be interesting to see how well this new idea works and to see if it will catch on like Myspace was able to do so well. Or, will it be lost and forgotten for not accruing enough added interest? Right now the market is small and very knowledgeable about web 2.0, considering that Twitter is still in it's beginning stages as a service with primarily early adopters as users.

What will Twitter?s business model look like? How will both Twitter and its client companies effectively use this service to generate a sustainable amount of revenue? All of this will be interesting to watch unfold as the aging television networks struggle to keep viewer rankings and profits afloat. Will it be enough and will the Twitter community be accepting? What is your take on the effectiveness of Twitter for marketing purposes?