Your competitor may not need to have a particular problem to try some variation of this, but here is what I just saw happen when MediaTemple servers stopped delivering for some time this morning. First I noticed that all our web sites hosted at MediaTemple were down. So I went to Twitter and searched for “MediaTemple” to see what others might be saying.

Here is the promoted message I saw:

Having problems with your hosting provider today? Here is a $100 coupon to try Storm On Demand Free! http://bit.ly/fyIKD1

So, a MediaTemple competitor was able to take advantage of a problem that just happened. I don’t know if they had already paid for a promoted Tweet before the MediaTemple problem happened. But, if a company and Twitter were nimble enough to take advantage of an event in a small window of time, then I’d be really happy with how cost effective that kind of targeting would be.

How might you use this?

Whether it is a competitor having a problem or some other type of event, think about what and why people might be searching through Twitter. Then, think about how you might turn that to your advantage.

So, Twitter does have a revenue model

According to Twitter: “Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that advertisers pay to highlight to a wider group of users.” This is a new service from Twitter and they are looking for feedback. Their signup page for advertisers asks about your monthly budget and the lowest choice in the menu starts at $5,000, so I am wondering if they will have offerings that let you start as cheaply as Google does with AdWords.