This article was published on August 21, 2011

Meet Twylah, Brand Pages for Twitter.


Meet Twylah, Brand Pages for Twitter.

Twylah is a service, which also offers an automated summary, but only of things that you tweet, and it has a very different purpose. Described as giving you the means to create your own ‘brand page,’ Twylah is a great way for websites, products, venues, and even individuals to create one page, which sums up what they’re about. It gives potential followers an instant summary of the topics you tweet the most about, or in other words, your personal trending tweets.

While Twylah automatically selects about 20 of your most popular tweeted topics, you can choose to exclude any of them if you prefer, as well as choosing to pin three specific topics to the top of your page. Each topic can be expanded, to display even more of your tweets on any given subject. Your fans and followers can reply to updates, and retweet them, directly from Twylah, as well as +1, tweet or like your entire page, or just a specific topic.

How does Twylah work?

Your topics on Twylah are determined by how your followers react to them, or in other words, by your influence on any given subject. The tweets, and by extensions topics, which receive the most retweets, replies and reactions from your followers are the ones that make into your list. With time, the service becomes even more refined, alerting you which topics are creating more of a buzz. In this sense, Twylah becomes an even more useful marketing tool because it gives you a overview of what works and what doesn’t with your followers, so you’re more likely to give them the exact kind of content they are waiting for.

Why use Twylah?

The most obvious use for Twylah is for brands to market their product and Twitter account at the same time. The sleek grid which features about 10 of your most trending topics, with images taken either from your posts, or from related tweets from other users, is an attractive and extremely easy way to let people know exactly what you’re about. It’s also an easy way for people who aren’t on Twitter to keep up with your latest tweets.

Whether it’s a brand or a personal Twitter account, what you tweet says a lot about you. Twylah provides with far more information than your actual Twitter profile.

When deciding whether or not to follow someone, you probably glance at their bio, links and their 20 last tweets. Using the same amount of time on Twylah, you can tell you far more about that user, and for some brands it could make all the difference in gaining more followers. And of course there’s a convenient follow button built right into the page.

How do you drive people to your Twylah page?

There are several ways to ensure that people actually see your Twylah page. The first and most obvious is to place a link on your website or blog. Twylah provides some varied and attractive buttons if you want to make sure that people take notice of the link. The buttons are available in the Resources section.

Another way you can drive traffic to your Twylah page is to tweet directly from Twylah. To do this, you can either send a ‘power tweet’ from the site itself, or you can use a handy bookmarklet, which will let you tweet from whatever page you happen to be visiting in your browser.

What happens when you tweet a link from Twylah, is that rather than take you straight to that page, it displays an excerpt, alongside other related tweets you’ve sent out in the past, putting the update in context of your own Twitter history.

This feature should probably be used with a bit of caution, rather than every tweet you share. Some of your followers might prefer to be sent straight to the post, and tend to get annoyed by these kinds of features when over-used.

TNW Verdict

Twylah is a great addition in the arsenal of tools you can use to publicize and market your brand, your Twitter account or, even, yourself. The final product is a sleek, premium-like offering which any brand should be happy to use alongside their other utilities or even as a Twitter profile replacement itself. It couldn’t be easier to use – simply connect your account and let Twylah work its magic.

The added bonus of knowing which of your tweets do best via Twylah, along with improving your SEO on Google and Bing, make it an invaluable tool in the long run. We only have two concerns about the service as a whole. First, be sure not to abuse the Power Tweets feature, otherwise you could wind up losing more followers than you gain. Second, and more importantly, while we appreciate Twylah’s ease of use, having a little bit more control over how topics are named and arranged, as well as having more control over the tweets that appear, would make the service even better. A great place to start would be the ability to exclude replies and retweets from the lists.

To get a sense of how Twylah’s brand pages look and feel, check out The Next Web’s own, personalized page. To find out more about Twylah, watch Robert Scoble’s interview with founder, Eric Kim.

Want to try out Twylah for yourself? Head over to the site and register to get in on the private beta. Once you’ve done that, come back here and let us know by leaving a comment, including the email address you used to sign up.

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