Twitter has a feature called "pinned tweets" for select high-profile users such as politicians and artists, allowing the users to display a single tweet at the top of their profiles labeled as "promoted."
But unlike certain paid promoted tweets by brands and users, "pinned tweets" are free for these select users. The feature itself is also offered to paying users.
BuzzFeed first noticed the feature when it inquired if Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who's up for re-election this year, had paid to promote tweets on his government Twitter account. Graham's spokesman told BuzzFeed the senator's Twitter account was using "pinned tweets," and the service was free.
Graham's spokesman told BuzzFeed that feature was located on a user's analytics page.
The feature only currently shows up on the browser version of Twitter, but not on mobile or Tweetdeck.
A source at Twitter confirmed to BuzzFeed Thursday the featured has been around for just about a year to certain select high-profile users, and said it was done through Twitter's partnership team.
UPDATE: This post has been updated to include that feature has been around for a year but is being given to news users through Twitter's partnership team.
