Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo announced that Twitter would be retiring its Early Bird advertising product, which partnered with retailers and e-commerce companies to offer discounted deals to Twitter users.
“We had tremendous early success with it,” Costolo said, citing deals with Virgin America and Disney. “But it needs to be reworked or rethought.” Most of the deals offered were available only to U.S. users, which adversely affected user experience for its global audience, he explained. The first deal was two-for-one tickets to the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” an average movie. A 32″ Vizio HDTV from Target was offered for $349.99 but was available for the same price on other electronics sites. But EarlyBird caught the worm with a JetBlue offer; Twitter offered users a 20% discount which led to 1,000 ticket sales within the first 10 hours.
