• New Media Age, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 12:15 PM

New Media Age has the scoop on a new Twitter-backed company that helps brands leverage the microblogging service. Universal Pictures, Virgin Media and Gorillaz are among the first brands to launch commercial services through the new company, which has been set up by angel investor and entrepreneur Peter Read with a high-profile board of advisors including Lastminute.com founders Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, Last.fm founder Stefan Glaenzer, Lovefilm co-founder Saul Klein, former Sky online marketing director Scott Gallacher and former Yahoo VP Toby Coppel. Twitter is understood to have taken an equity stake in the new firm.

The popular band Gorillaz is the first Twitter Partners client to launch a campaign for its new documentary film "Bananaz." Later this month, the company will also launch campaigns for Paramount, Universal Pictures, Lionsgate and Warner Music.

According to Read, Twitter Partners aims to help clients understand Twitter users and their behavior. "Ad placements can't be bought on Twitter at the moment. But our relationship helps to broker brands onto the platform as we have detailed exposure to what works," Read said, adding that the firms services include customer profiling and segmentation, customer relationship management, and virtual focus groups. He said Twitter is excited about the prospect of big media firms approaching it, but it doesn't yet have the personnel to handle this interest. This is where Twitter Partners comes in, he said.

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