As Twitter has become an increasingly important part of the media strategy for content producers such as newspapers, TV networks and other media players, measuring the impact of a tweet has become even more important — so that those companies can show that spending time on Twitter has actual business value in terms of driving traffic and engagement. Until now, using analytical tools like Bitly’s link-tracking and Chartbeat’s dashboard have been the only way to do this, but Twitter has just thrown its own offering into the ring: an analytical tool-kit the company announced on Tuesday that can track tweets and links across the network.

In many ways, what Twitter is releasing — in a rollout that will see certain corporate partners of the service get access to the analytics, followed by a broader public launch over the next few weeks — is Twitter’s version of the analytics that Facebook provides for users of both its pages and the ubiquitous “like” button. Just as brands and publishers use those tools to track who is engaging with their content via Facebook, Twitter’s dashboard shows who is interacting with a site’s content either by tweeting or retweeting a link to it, or by using the Twitter button the company offered for websites and publishers since last year.

How effective is a Twitter link?

The analytics rollout clearly seems intended to demonstrate just how effective Twitter is for publishers and content creators when it comes to distributing their content and engaging with users. That’s undoubtedly a big part of the company’s marketing effort for brands and advertisers as it continues to roll out ad-focused features such as Promoted Tweets — which Twitter said on Tuesday will be coming to users’ timelines soon (based on algorithms that try to determine which promoted tweets are most relevant to a particular user’s interests).

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