You’re not all on Twitter. I get that; I know people who don’t drink alcohol, either, and I don’t judge them for that. To all you cool social media cats, though, this is troubling: Twitter is readying a new ad product that will serve up ads to users from company accounts they don’t already follow.

Which means Dick Costolo is trying to generate more revenue for his company – recently evaluated as worth $8.4 billion.

This means, of course, that our favourite not-making-any-money-out-of-our-private-data service is going to start making advertising money, out of our private data. Where beforehand I’d have to follow @andunion to see their ads, the new system would decide that I want to hear about fancy craft beers whether I know it or not, and throw their updates onto my feed.

Which is fine, because I’m all about fancy craft beers, but is going to be incredibly annoying when I start getting updates from every brand willing to pay Twitter for advertising space – which shouldn’t take long.

The scheme will launch in beta by the end of September.

[Source: AllThingsDigital]