Brand Pages Part of Twitter’s New Look

Twitter is trying to finish off 2011 with a bang. The service has been a little quiet on the news front as of late and today we have learned why as they have introduced not only a new look but their own version of brand pages.

Fearing they would be outdone by the likes of Google+, Facebook and just about anyone else, the microblogging service (does anyone actually use that term anymore other than the way I just did?) is giving brands their own presence in the Twitterverse or whatever the heck the cool kids are calling it these days.

AdAge reports

Twitter is looking to strengthen its relationship with advertisers by launching brand pages that will be unveiled today as part of a more comprehensive redesign.

Brand pages have two key elements, both of them free. They can be customized with large header images that advertisers can use to display their logo and tagline more prominently than under the standard format, where branded elements of the page design are often partially covered by the time line of tweets. Brands can also choose to keep a particular tweet at the top of their time line, and that top tweet also auto-expands to reveal an embedded photo or video from Flickr, YouTube or other sources, without requiring the user to take action.

But there is more. By separating @replies and mentions Twitter facilitates the customer service savvy companies without interfering with the messaging. It’s a smart move for sure and one that will make for interesting interactions.

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Twitter’s Chief Revenue Officer, Adam Bain (aka the man on the revenue hotseat) explains some of the theory behind the new offering.

Mr. Bain said that all the marketers involved in the launch are strategic partners and advertisers that have been involved in ongoing dialogues with Twitter.

“The question for each one of these marketers is what is the interesting, compelling, provocative content that they can be putting out to a larger audience to keep that engagement high,” said Mr. Bain, adding that marketers in the launch group were already actively distributing content on Twitter but were looking for a way to make it stand out better.

So the commercialization of Twitter continues and all we have to do is sit back and wait to see if this type of marketing option works for everyone from the mom and pop to big boys. One thing about Twitter is that not every company’s target market is using the service, unlike Facebook, so marketers will need to be quite discerning as to how much effort this merits for their particular business.