Twitter follows you and the apps you've downloaded for better ad targetting

Twitter on Wednesday unveiled a new tool called "installed app category targeting", giving advertisers an edge when it comes to catering ads to users on the online social networking service. With the new feature, marketers can target their ads to Twitter users based on the category of the app and how recently the app was downloaded onto your phones.

Re/code said for the past six months ,Twitter collected users' data to know what type of apps they had downloaded. And with this data and the new advertising tool, Twitter is set to make a large amount of money from advertisers.

The new feature is a powerful tool because Twitter will be collecting your data on apps you download and it will sell it to advertisers, who will in turn carry out specific ad targeting. Advertisers can also make use of the analytics dashboard which provides insights into how users are responding to these targeted ads.

With the help of this new tool, ads may become more relevant to users but this type of ad targeting is freaky as advertisers will come to know your very personal choices and patterns on how you use your phones. However, Twitter will not be able to gather your personal information from within the apps. Say for example you download a messaging app, Twitter will come to know about it but it won't be able to access your messages.

And if you don't want Twitter to gather your personal information about which apps you have downloaded then you can disable the "Tailor Twitter based on my apps" option from the settings menu on iOS and Android.

Twiiter's new tool for advertisers is now available across the world and on phones running both iOS and Android operating systems, The Next Web reported.

Most of Twitter's revenue is generated through targeted ads. Twitter has been collecting users' data -- tweets and people you follow -- to display targeted ads.