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Party's Over, Twitter VIPs: You're Getting Ads Again

Some of you, at least.

Warner Bros via Facebook
Peter Kafka covers media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

Sorry, Twitter VIPs.

I think I blew it for you.

Last month I reported that Twitter had stopped showing ads to some Twitter VIPs, in an attempt to get some of its most engaging tweeters to tweet more.

This made a little bit of sense, if you sort of squinted at it. But it also seemed like an un-Twittery thing to do for a long period of time: Why promote the sense that some Twitter users (like me!) are better than others?

Also: Why promote the idea that ads are something you’d like to avoid, if you’re in the business of selling ads?

Anyway, that appears to be over now.

I still haven’t seen any ads in my feed. But if Marc “I Love Twitter So Much I Should Buy It” Andreessen started seeing ads in his feed today — a day before Twitter reports earnings — I think that’s a pretty good tell.

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/697207432393543680

And he’s not the only one who’s noticed.

LinkedIn content boss (and Code Media speaker) Dan Roth:

https://twitter.com/danroth/status/697207288797491200

Business Insider editor Jay Yarow:

https://twitter.com/jyarow/status/697196702835601409

And my colleague Kurt “Scoop” Wagner:

I bet a bunch of you are also seeing them for the first time in a while, so go ahead and send me a Tweet or screenshot if you’d like. And again, I’m sorry that I screwed things up. If that’s what happened.

For the record, Twitter comms fellow Will Stickney offered up the same line he offered up last month: “We’re constantly looking at constraints and adjustments to optimize which ads are shown and how often.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoQZ0qmf-mk

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.