Today Twitter unveiled its new pages for its hashtags feature with the launch of the #NASCAR page. The new pages are designed to better promotes trends and brands and feature such items as banner displays (similar to Twitter's recent business page redesigns), top Twitter accounts and the obvious inclusion of a live feed featuring tweets sent using the hashtag in question.
To promote the new hashtag pages, Twitter released its first television advertisement during today's NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Pocono. The brief 16-second ad invites users to "See what [Brad Keselowski] sees." The commercial then directs viewers to the new #NASCAR page. In February, Keselowski caused a media frenzy by tweeting pictures of a crash from his car during the Daytona 500, including one picture he took while driving.
As Business Insider points out, the purpose of the commercial is actually to convince advertisers to use hashtags. Twitter's hashtags have become a major asset for advertisers, who frequently use the feature to promote events and products. Multiple television shows, such as Fox's Fringe, have used the feature to create episode-specific hashtags for fans to interact with one another, thus promoting the shows. Twitter is widely expected to go public within a year, and advertiser support is its primary source of revenue.
On Thursday, Omid Ashtari, head of sports and entertainment at Twitter, posted an entry on the company's blog calling the new hashtag pages an "experiment." In the entry, Ashtari indicated the #NASCAR page will continue to change during the current NASCAR season. Ashtari also stated that "a combination of algorithms and curation will surface the most interesting Tweets to bring you closer to all of the action happening around the track, from the garage to the victory lane."
Sources: Business Insider, Twitter
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