Twitter introduces brand pages in Japan, a first for Asia

Twitter first launched brand pages in the US in December last year and four months later the advertising feature has come to Japan, the first market in Asia.

DoCoMo, the country’s largest mobile operator, national retailer Lawson and Warner Entertainment Japan are the first companies that will take advantage of the pages, according to the Twitter Japan blog [Japanese], via Asiajin.

It’s of little surprise that Twitter has chosen Japan as its third market to launch brand pages — behind the US and the UK, the latter of which got the feature in February — as the microblogging service has been a runaway success in Japan. Twitter has broken into the mainstream in Japan which, in a country that has traditionally preferred domestic services to those from overseas, is quite an achievement.

Last year Twitter founder Jack Dorsey took stock of its remarkable growth, which began by allowing Tamagotchi owners to feed their pets more easily, before becoming (arguably) Japan’s most popular social network.

Proof of Twitter’s appeal in Japan came last year when Mixi, which has been the country’s leading social network for some time, announced an advertising partnership with Twitter to help combat the growing threat of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s service has taken its time to grow, but the last six months saw its membership double to reach 10 million members in the country.

The introduction of brand pages is another landmark for Japan, which was the first market that Twitter chose for a fully-translated service. Japanese have enjoyed other perks too, such as hashtag support, which was added last year, and that’s something that few non-English versions support today.

It seems likely that brand pages will begin rolling across the rest of Asia in due course, and we’ll keep you posted as and when that happens.

We’ve reached out to Twitter for more details and will update this article with any new information that we’re given.

The pages, which are not for all companies as they require advertisers to spend $25,000, are below.