Read the original story on: TechCrunch
Twitter’s minimalistic sign-up process may have helped its user acquisition in the beginning, but it also caused a deficiency in basic user info that the social microblogging service is now trying to fix as it starts to promise advertisers stronger targeting capabilities. For the new “persona-based” ad targeting tools introduced earlier this week, for example, Twitter is reportedly getting some of the biographic info it needs from consumer data companies Acxiom and Datalogix. But why buy it if you can get users to voluntarily offer it?
And that is exactly the logic behind Twitter’s newest addition. The social network launched a new feature today that lets users to put in their birthdates in exchange for animated balloons floating around user profiles on their birthdays. If this serves as any indication, more data-grabbing initiatives like this could be expected from Twitter in the near future.
