Have you ever wondered how effective twitter actually is to your marketing strategies? The limitations of the network has actually put a big question mark on marketing plans when figuring out whether to allocate resources to the channel.

Well it looks like our prayers have been answered. Twitter is giving more back to the brands that operate on their network. The recently introduced “brand pages” which includes the brands twitter feed, images and soon to have e-commerce functionality and enables app developers to run contests, sweepstakes and other promotional material.

Twitter has been telling clients that they can expect it sometime this year. This will give alot more business’s a reason to put more resources into their Twitter pages, as up until now only Facebook had the ability to create interactive environments that go beyond just updates. With the changes that Facebook has made with the timeline as well, this move may actually win twitter a lot more fans amongst the business users.

The brand pages launch in January has been impressive with 21 high profile brands like Nike, American Express and McDonalds coming on board – each spending over $25,000 in advertising.

We’ll be keeping an eye on these brands to see whether their money spend on twitter is actually giving them returns. We are always interested in the experiences of others and would like to open up the questions: Are you currently active on Twitter?