Twitter today launched its Official Partner program, in effect upgrading members of its existing partnership programs to a new status, and providing a one-stop tool for marketers and advertisers looking for help in using Twitter data.
Landing pages for the earlier programs–certified products partners and marketing platform partners–now redirect to the Official Partner portal, which allows users to search for partners based on location, industry sector, and need: e.g. “I need help with monitoring social trends”). Twitter qualifies partners according to “high-quality products or expert-level services and proven success on Twitter.”
Twitter and IBM have worked to train more than 10,000 IBM employees on Twitter data.
Although the new initiative largely rolls over an existing portfolio of third party services into the new program, Twitter has announced IBM as its first ever Consultancy Partner, saying: “IBM is the first solutions provider that provides strategic insight, consulting and analytics to help brands and enterprises make decisions with Twitter data. Twitter and IBM have worked to train more than 10,000 IBM employees on Twitter data and analytics best practices.”
A data analysis partnership between Twitter and IBM was announced in October last year. Only last month, IBM and Facebook announced the integration of IBM Journey Analytics with Facebook Ad Tools. In addition to providing a third party service for enterprises seeking to understand and manipulate Twitter data, the partnership seems to signal a further move to strengthen the appeal of IBM’s own marketing platform solution.
