TweetUp, the Twitter-focused search and advertising startup that was incubated by idealab – the original Overture founders – is launching today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City.
Serial entrepreneur Bill Gross took the stage for the event’s first ‘for show launch’ and publicly debuted TweetUp’s core service – the startup had earlier opened the gates for early-adopting advertisers only (their blog post is up too).
TweetUp’s destination site ranks Twitter search results by time and via an algorithm to determine if a result should go higher than other more recent tweets containing the keyword queried. Users will also see targeted (paid) advertiser results within that stream.
Gross explained that advertisers paying for ranking for specific keywords will also tend to be good results, since bad ads will be bid out of the system. TweetUp’s business model is based on a 50/50 revenue share system, which is a pretty compelling offer for advertisers.
TweetUp also offers any publisher embeddable widgets and other contextual layers filled with relevant live tweets based on given keywords – you can see an example in the TechCrunch.com sidebar on the right-hand side.
Additional benefit: analytics. Advertisers can use the TweetUp system to track in which Twitter clients their advertisements appear, the number of impressions served, aggregate of followers reached, and more.
The elephant in the room is of course that Twitter is experimenting with an ad platform of its own – not to mention other bidders such as Ad.ly and Twad.ly – and if TweetUp is going to be able to compete with that.
Time will tell, but Gross’ pedigree and some of the (at least for now) unique features of TweetUp might make a bigger impact than you would think at first glance.
Investors seems to agree: TweetUp has recently closed a $3.5 million first round of funding led by Index Ventures, and have taken investments from SV Angel (Ron Conway), First Round Capital, Betaworks, Steve Case, Jason Calacanis and Jeff Jarvis.
UberMedia (formerly postup) is the leading independent developer of applications and web-based services that make it easier for users to find, follow and communicate with others on Twitter and other social media platforms. The company is focused on driving innovation in user experiences across a range of online and mobile platforms. UberMedia also provides advertisers and brands with new ways to engage and communicate with consumers via Twitter through its family of apps. Located in Pasadena, California, UberMedia is...
Bill Gross is a lifelong entrepreneur and proponent of solar power. While still in college, Mr. Gross founded Solar Devices, a firm that sold plans and kits for solar energy products. As the CEO of the technology incubator Idealab, Mr. Gross has founded several extremely successful companies, including Overture (acquired by Yahoo!), CarsDirect, and Picasa (acquired by Google). Idealab recently moved into the renewable energy market with Energy Innovations, a sister company to eSolar that focuses on the retail...
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
