Twitter Now Has an Official Gaming Account

Not long after social networking site Twitter hired its first-ever gaming boss, the company has now launched an official "Twitter Gaming" account, @TwitterGaming. The account sent its first tweet, a simple message of "Hello!," on January 8. A second tweet was sent out today, January 13, featuring an animated GIF of the famous Space Invaders "Press Start" screen and the caption, "Let's tweet."

The Twitter Gaming account says it represents the "best of games, gaming, gamers, and esports on @twitter." In just a few days, it's amassed more than 18,000 followers.

It is following 46 other accounts at press time, including channels for Halo, Minecraft, Assassin's Creed, and Battlefield. It's also following the official PlayStation and Nintendo accounts, but not Xbox's.

Twitter Gaming has also already had a fun little exchange with Bethesda about Fallout.

Heading up Twitter's new gaming efforts is Rodrigo Velloso, who works as director of gaming partnerships at the company. He comes to Twitter after more than two years with the same title at the Google-owned video behemoth YouTube.

Part of Velloso's charter is to help Twitter build relationships in the gaming community with individual developers and personalities, as well as massive conventions like E3 and PAX

In December, Twitter partnered with The Game Awards in a number of ways. One of these efforts was Twitter Mirror, a program that tweeted selfies and GIFs from the show's red carpet in real time.