Bill Gross launches Twitter search ad marketplace

Search advertising market pioneer Bill Gross has launched a public beta of keyword-based bidding marketplace TweetUp, in an attempt to capitalise on Twitter's rapid growth.
 
The site was funded through $3.5 million (€2.5 million) in venture capital from investors including Index Ventures, betaworks and Revolution LLC, All Things Digital said. It has been developed without any involvement from Twitter.
 
In a statement, Gross said TweetUp will operate in a similar fashion to Overture/GoTo.com, the web's first paid search system that he developed.
 
Advertisers will be able to bid on popular keywords in a similar fashion to Google's AdWords service.
 
The search engine will also attempt to sort tweets by relevance, with the most important messages being at the top.
 
"Twitter has such tremendous potential as a real-time information network far beyond what has been realised to date,” he said.
 
“For most people, though, 80% or more of the tweets that fly by them when they're searching for something are useless noise. For serious tweeters, the task of attracting interested and relevant followers is equally daunting. TweetUp will change all of that.”
 
TweetUp has already reached revenue sharing agreements with Twitter clients including multi-platform client Seesmic and Android client Twitdroid, aggregator TwitterFeed and web sites such as Answers.com, BusinessInsider.com and PopURLs.
 
Gross is serving as CEO of the startup.