140 characters of small biz ads

Twitter announced yesterday that it will allow small businesses to buy promoted tweets, which appear in all user feeds. The deal is limited to businesses that use American Express cards, but it will open to others in the near future. You probably won’t notice too much difference in your stream, because Twitter has been putting sponsored tweets in your stream since 2010, but now you know why the  bodega across the street and that car wash from around the corner suddenly appeared in your list.