This weekend we reported on a quick and sneaky deal done by DC Comics to promote their New 52: they bought a promoted tweet on Twitter. Now, the way this works is that entities can buy promoted tweets, and whatever that tweet is will appear at the top of whatever search they want it to. This even goes for trending topics. For example, right now, there’s some kind of Beatles promotion at the top of my trending topics feed.
Of course, there’s no hard and fast rules on what a given entity can and can’t tie it’s promoted tweet to. If they happen to tie it to a trademarked word or phrase, it’s on the owner of the trademark to report them to twitter. So that’s why, if you happened to be searching for “thor,” “iron man,” “x-men,” or “spider-man” this morning, you might have seen the above tweet from DC Comics’ twitter account at the top of the search result.
Naturally, it has nothing to do with any Marvel superheroes and everything to do with DC’s New 52, which has turned out to be solidly lucrative for the company, and is moving DC closer to closing the gap in comics market share between them and Marvel.
Naturally, Marvel jumped on that pretty fast, just three hours after Bleeding Cool managed to get screenshots, DC’s tweet is no longer riding high above actual mentions. Which means now, the top tweet for a search for Thor is “Should I watch ‘Thor‘ or punch myself in the face for an hour and a half?”
So, that’s… better?
I’d say this is kind of sleazy on DC’s part, but in all honesty it’s at worst as sleazy as offering retailers free comics for destroying your competitor’s books.
(via Bleeding Cool.)
