Dive Brief:

• Providing marketers with a new online focus group, Twitter’s Insiders program features more than 12,000 users 16-years-old and up who are willing to participate in research studies as part of virtual panels.
• The Twitter Insiders network is drawn from users in the U.S. and U.K.
• The microblogging network is also offering marketers CSpace, a team of consultants who can help marketers tap into Twitter Insiders insights.

Dive Insight:

For marketers on Twitter, having access to quick insights will only help them better react in real time. Given that this is Twitter's main point of distinction among other social platforms -- the live, real time element it provides -- adding tools that equip brands to better engage with users is a natural move.

“Whether you're putting together the perfect pitch for a new client or you're optimizing a campaign that's already in motion, the ad hoc research Twitter Insiders enables is a powerful tool for agencies,” Gemma Proctor, research manager at Twitter, wrote in a blog post. Proctor went on to explain that the Insiders are always available for continuous, fast research and that some of their short-term projects can turn around results in as little as a couple days.

Lately Twitter has been actively making changes to its service and platform while it is facing serious questions and concerns from its investors. Two recent moves include testing carousel ads for promoted tweets and new automation tools for pre-roll video ads. Twitter was recently passed by Snapchat in average daily users, symbolically moving the microblogging platform down one rung in the social media world.