Twitter on Friday received a long awaited brand endorsement when athletic apparel and equipment maker Nike finally joined the social network with the account @Nike.

At the time of this post Nike has managed to amass 19,395 followers during the accounts first day in existence.

Almost immediately following the Twitter accounts release major athletes began following the brand including Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Steve Nash among others.

The move to Twitter shows Nike’s dominance over the market after the company managed to rack up more followers than Adidas in less than a 24 hour period. read more

If Europeans have all rights to mock Americans for their soccer skills and history, the World Cup has brought at least one thing to the USA but a gold plated trophy is not that thing. Nor are Vuvuzelas.

So what’s it?

Twitter launched promoted tweets just before the start of the USA- Ghana knock out game today.

For a long time people have wondered what Twitter’s business model was and promoted tweets, announced several months ago already now have made their appearance.

During the biggest sports event in the world, which broke the previous Tweets/second record, before the nation with the biggest number of Twitter users plays a knock-out game.

Twitter’s first partner: one of the biggest brands in the world, Nike and also sponsor of the national soccer team of the USA.

The promoted tweet ranks on top of the search for the trending tag #USA. Even when new results come in, the sponsored tweet stays on top of the search results. read more