Twitter promoted tweets
Following the success of the promoted tweets revenue model, Twitter is going a step further: They're rolling out the same model onto the iOS and Android version of the platform. The promoted tweets feature--which locks a specific tweet to the top of people's feeds--is already available on the mobile website (mobile.twitter.com). The feature will be rolled out in an update to iPhones and Android-based phones over the next few weeks. Reuters

Twitter is releasing enhanced brand pages to several companies and organizations, including Al Jazeera, Anobii, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post, NBC News and Volkswagen.

This is the second round of enhanced brand pages that Twitter will unleash. The social network launched unique pages for companies such as Coca-Cola, the American Red Cross, American Express and Dell in December 2011.

Enhanced brand pages allow companies to perform several special functions on Twitter, including uploading banners, promoting tweets to the top of their timeline and more.

HP and Intel, two of the original 21 brands to be invited to use the platform, were lauded for their use of the extra functionality. The two brands hosted a live stream of a Tiësto concert at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

HP came to us with the idea and we couldn't be more excited to hear how the company and Intel will be using their Twitter brand pages to reach out to the public and become destination sites, said Twitter's director of West Coast sales, Rob Pietsch, in an interview with Mashable. It's a first for us, and we expect in the future that more companies will integrate streaming video into their pages.

The push to be more advertising-friendly comes as the company tries to double its revenue in the unfolding year. Twitter expects to earn $259.9 million in revenue, according to Venture Beat, which is up from $139.5 in 2011.

By comparison, Facebook earned $3.71 billion in revenue during 2011. Facebook derives 85 percent of those revenues from advertising. The rest of Facebook's revenues come from social gaming and other small fees charged for less popular services that it provides.

Dell Al Jazeera Volkswagen Twitter