Twitter's first promoted stickers come from Pepsi

You knew it was just a matter of time before Twitter's stickers became advertising vehicles. The social network has just introduced promoted stickers, which help brands get their message out through the same searchable 'visual hashtags' that you might already be slapping on your photos. Pepsi is the first to embrace the concept, and it'll offer 50 of the emoji you've seen on bottles and cans (see above) as stickers across 10 regions.

It's hard to say how well this will work. Are you really going to use Pepsi's take on a smiley if a less corporate version already exists? Stranger things have happened, however -- it's easy to find people who cheerlead for brands on Twitter without prompting. And when Twitter is still losing money, anything that attracts big ad deals is bound to be worth the company's attention.