• Los Angeles Times, Thursday, June 17, 2010 11:58 AM

Twitter is testing a new featured called Promoted Trends, and Disney/Pixar's "Toy Story 3" is coming along for the ride. Twitter already lets advertisers insert messages into users' streams through a program called Promoted Tweets. Likewise, Promoted Trends could serve to monetize its trending feature, which highlights topics popular with its users. "The concept is simple: Advertisers insert their own trend to display on users' home pages," writes The Los Angeles Times.

"A big yellow box alerts users that the topic is promoted, not organic ... If you click on the link, it takes you to a search results page to see what people are saying about the film." Says a Twitter spokeswoman: "We plan to test different advertising and promotional models in these early stages of our monetization efforts ... These Promoted Trends initially appear at the bottom of the Trending Topics list on Twitter and are clearly marked 'Promoted' ... As conversations about the topic increase, Promoted Trends may move up the list."

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