Twitter’s Earlybird account, which was launched way, way back in… July to post exclusive offers from selected partners, has been scrapped in favour of more lucrative advertising platforms such as Promoted Tweets.

Earlybird kicked off with an exclusive tickets offer with Walt Disney Studios and over its short lifetime went on to promote US-focused deals from brands such as Gap, Virgin America, Staples, Moxsie and more.

So with such big brands on board, why was Earlybird ditched so soon?

Why Earlybird failed to catch the worm

Take a look at your Twitter stream and you’ll see a steady flow of people desperate to sell you stuff.

They could be pushing products you’re already interested in. Or it could be people like the porn-y looking lass who started following me the other day whose sole reason for being on Twitter was to flog some weird lemonade diet. Hic!

When Twitter itself tries to get in on the act it faces stiff competition, usually from marketers who are much more polished and effective at selling through social media.

The Earlybird stream, however, is shouty and repetitive. It tries to cover too many different markets; while you may love discounts on Gap jeans, their posts about deals on stationery may cause you to hit the unfollow button.

I also notice that despite their 230,000+ followers they’re not following anyone back, an unappealing ‘me, me, me’ approach which suggests that they’re not crazy about customer engagement.

What’s so good about Promoted Tweets?

This ad platform, launched in April this year, puts a particular brand at the top of the list when a user searches for something related to its products. A report in the Wall Street journal claims that Twitter is now selling Promoted Tweets for upwards of $100,000.

This seems a lot until you realise that 130 million searches were conducted on twitter.com last month.

And with evidence to suggest that people are 67% more likely to purchase products from brands they follow on Twitter, it’s easy to see how Promoted Tweets can be an effective (if sometimes costly) marketing tool.

What’s next for Twitter and advertising?

It seems the natural next step is to target users based on the content of their tweets rather than wait for them to type out a search term. There’s also the new Promoted Accounts feature, which, as we reported yesterday, will let advertisers buy a place in the recommended users list.

Twitter’s big ad push has only just begun, and if the question a year ago was, ‘How will Twitter make money?’ the question now is, ‘How much will they make?’