Screenshot of Volkswagen's enhanced Twitter page (click to enlarge)
On Wednesday, Twitter switched on enhanced brand pages for accounts owned by National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and Anobii, among others. This is the first batch of premium Twitter pages from companies other than the handful of launch partners (including Coca-Cola, the American Red Cross, and American Express) who unveiled enhanced brand pages in December.
A quick refresher: As part of the head-to-toe redesign Twitter first announced back on December 8, Twitter said it would give companies, brands, media organizations and celebrities the ability to have “enhanced” profile pages with extra design options and content feed controls. While the general redesign started rolling out to the majority of Twitter users nearly two months ago, the company took a bit more time in pushing the makeover for its first class users.
A Twitter spokesperson tells me the enhanced brand pages “will continue to roll out to advertising partners, as well as other select partners, charities, media organizations, and individuals” over the coming weeks and months. As Twitter gets more serious about generating revenue, it makes sense that it would want to create a more welcoming environment to big-name brands — the types of users who may want to buy more ads on the site after they see how nice their spruced up pages are.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
- NewNet 2012: companies and technologies set to disrupt
- Players and Strategies for Real-Time In-Stream Advertising
- 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
