London - Twitter has announced it plans to start tracking users and the websites they visit.
The site plans to use browser cookies – small files that are placed on people’s computers each time they visit a web page – to track online movements.
Advertising partners will then be able to target customers by either anonymously matching e-mail addresses of users, or by using the cookies collected, to serve more personalised adverts.
In a blog post, Twitter said the service would be launched in the US but did not say whether it would be rolled out to other areas.
The idea, Twitter said, was to show “more useful” adverts to its users.
In a statement, it said: “Users won’t see more ads on Twitter, but they may see better ones.”
By tracking them with a cookie to see what they look at online, the adverts will be for products or services the user may have already looked at or expressed an interest in.
Twitter is not the first site to use personalised advertising; Facebook already does it, as does Google.
In the case of Google, the search results as well as the sponsored adverts can also be personalised.
This means, for example, if you’re a gadget fan and have bought Apple products or read stories about the Apple brand, when you search Google for the word “apple”, results about the tech company will feature higher on the search list than results for the fruit.
Sites could previously track users using cookies and not inform the person visiting the site they were doing so.
In May 2012 a new EU regulation came into force that meant any sites that used cookies had to display a warning message for each visitor.
The Twitter tracking will be turned on by default, but users will be able to opt out.
Twitter’s site also said that users who had the Do Not Track (DNT) feature enabled on their browsers would not be affected by the plans.
Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer all have the DNT feature built in and users have to enable it if they want to stop websites tracking them.
Twitter also said users could stop advertisers from tracking them on Twitter by going to their Account Settings page and unticking the “promoted content” box.
Twitter is expected to earn about $583 million (R5.7 billion) in advertising revenue this year and $1bn in 2014, according to research firm EMarketer.
Twitter has been praised by privacy campaign groups for supporting DNT.
A blog post from Adi Kamdar of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: “Twitter is setting an important example.
“It is possible to exist in an ecosystem of tailored advertisements and online tracking while also giving users an easy and meaningful opt-out choice.
“This is in stark contrast to many other advertising and tracking firms.
“Consumer privacy is an issue of control and transparency; you may be perfectly fine with targeted ads, but you should have the ability to know what information companies have about you and the option of saying no.”
To support its claim for transparency, Twitter will also be linking to each advertising partner’s cookie opt-out pages.
When users enable DNT or opt out from cookies on websites, their data is wiped from the companies’ files.
This means any stored log-in or payment details are removed and will need to be entered manually. – Daily Mail
HOW WILL TWITTER TRACK YOU?
In its blog post, Twitter used the example of a florist when discussing its new advertising plans.
If a florist wants to advertise on Twitter for Valentine’s Day, for example, they would prefer to show their advert to flower enthusiasts, or people who have already looked for bouquets on their site.
The florist can approach Twitter and share a ‘scrambled, unreadable’ and anonymous e-mail address – known as a hash.
Alternatively, they can use browser-related information – known as a browser cookie ID.
Twitter can then use the e-mail address or the cookie to scan its users and match the advertisers with the relevant people.
The site can then match that information to accounts and show them a promoted Tweet with the Valentine’s Day deal.
Twitter adds this is how most other companies handle this practice, and added it doesn’t give advertisers any additional user information.