Like many high user/ low revenue businesses of its ilk, it sometimes feels like you’re watching Twitter build its company in the limelight. It’s the classic situation of jumping off the cliff and fashioning your parachute on the way down.

The latest step in this process is the launch of its first TV ad (below) and the redesign of the twitter hashtag page, both linked to the Nascar event this weekend.

The fact that the former acted as a vehicle (no pun intended) for the introduction of the latter is well worth paying attention to. These pages are a leap away from the simple search experience that you normally get when you click on a hashtag. This hints at an experience almost like the equivalent of a Facebook page split between profile and wall – it will be interesting to see how the relationship between, in this example, @nascar and #nascar evolves over time.

You also can’t help but wonder whether some of the cogs are finally moving into place for an official Twitter analytics tool which was coming then not then on its way again… then never materialised. With Dick Costello bringing more stability to the company than it has had for a while, one can only hope the puzzle is finally starting to come together.

It’s also interesting to see that, like Foursquare, search is still central to online businesses making money – it’s easier to monetize eyeballs when you have that confirmation that they’re in the right place at the right time. Social search versus traditional is a battleground for sure but it does seem that the mechanism is as healthy as ever.

In the meantime, the opportunities to control the curation of conversations around your brand (or at least package it up nicely) is a trend that’s gaining momentum – and something that could take on a whole new level of detail if linked to a proper dashboard.