Twitter Joins a Hot Ecommerce Trend

Twitter, in rolling out its official @earlybird Exclusive Offers account, will take advantage of its strength to deliver time-sensitive information by offering daily deals similar to those popularized by the likes of Gilt Groupe, Groupon and Woot (just acquired by Amazon).

The @earlybird Exclusive Offers account will tweet special limited-time deals, sneak-peaks and events from select retail advertisers. Retailers will determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount and price. As of this morning, Earlybird had acquired over 19,000 followers, even though no deals have been broadcast yet.

Earlybird is a logical extension of Twitter’s Promoted Tweets ad platform, which rolled out last month. Twitter will earn money from sales resulting from Earlybird offers. Sean Garrett, a Twitter spokesman, told The New York Times that his company is experimenting with different revenue models, like a cut of each sale or a fixed price per deal. But the retailers will be the ones to collect payments and fulfill transactions.

Dell is an example of Twitter’s potential to generate revenue from advertising deals. In December, Dell reported $6.5 million in sales of PCs, accessories and software through its promotions on Twitter. ReadWriteWeb, which last Friday spotted the @earlybird account first, said, “Imagine how much more Twitter might be able to pull in with a bigger audience, more diverse products and promotions and big brand customers.”

In response to a Mashable story on Earlybird, a Twitter official would not name specific advertisers yet, but did say, “You can expect deals in fashion, tech, travel and entertainment.” It should be interesting to see how Twitter manages the feed for these different product segments and targets offers by location so followers do not get irrelevant promotions.

Earlybird will be interesting to watch. If it builds up a following, it could take business away from Groupon, Woot and other daily deal sites. The service might eventually go a long way in satisfying consumers’ appetite for daily deals. And some large retailers and consumer brands might opt to move their promotions to Earlybird in order to reach a larger and more targeted audience at favorable rates than they could attract on other daily deal sites.

And according to comScore, the audience on Twitter is a good one to target: The social site’s users tend to spend significantly more online than those who don’t visit.