The announcement, which was coupled with the introduction of a major redesign, will expand the number of brand pages on the platform. Launch partners for the pages include American Express, Best Buy, Bing, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney, General Electric, Hewlitt-Packard, Intel, JetBlue, Kia, McDonald's, Nike, PepsiCo, Staples, Verizon Wireless, NYSE Euronext, Heineken, Subway and Paramount Pictures, specifically for the release of Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol.
According to a report in Advertising Age, such brand pages will let advertisers customize their headers to make their logo and tagline more prominent. Twitter's Advertising Blog also notes that brands can "control the message visitors see when they first come to your profile page by promoting a tweet to the top of your page’s timeline." The idea is to highlight your best content. The Promoted Tweet on a marketer's profile page will appear auto-expanded to let visitors instantly see the photo or video content linked from a tweet. The new design also lets brands separate their @ replies and mentions, according to Ad Age's report.
Twitter's embrace of brand pages, which had been rumored since April, comes about a month after Google introduced brand pages for Google+.