TwitterHawk.com - Advertise Through Twitter

TwitterHawk is a new Twitter bot that will send automated messages to those who tweet specific keywords, and – this is the truly compelling aspect – are located in a specific area. (It is also possible to send messages globally if that is what you want.)

The uses of such a service are highlighted online. For example, those who open a records store in a specific part of the States (say, Philadelphia), can set down TwitterHawk to look through tweets that mention not only “Philadelphia” and “Records”, but which come from users within a given range, such as 10 miles.

When a twitterer that fulfills this criteria is found, then one of your automated messages is put that person’s way. It could be something like “Have you checked out Roger’s Records Store in Philly?” and so forth.

It is clear that such a service could lend itself to abuse, and that is why a link for reporting such situations is included online. Twitter and advertising do not blend together very well, but this team has somehow come up with a viable alternative.

“This is arguably the most targeted marketing that you can take advantage of! Let's say you just opened a new coffee store in Queens and wanted to let people know about it. As part of your advertising efforts, you could setup TwitterHawk to search for things like 'coffee near:Queens within:8mi' (of course you could simply search world wide if you are global). We would then periodically (at a frequency determined by you) find twitter posts that mentioned coffee by users that are actually located within 8mi of Queens, and send them one of your pre-defined replies.”

Twitter and advertising are not really things that can go hand in hand yet this team has managed to come up with a solution that stands some middle ground.

How will this go down among Twitter users? Will they accept it?