Twitter plamns to start selling ads that run outside its own platform in what could be the start of a broader advertising network. The company announced the first partnerships to syndicate Promoted Tweets outside of Twitter, with Flipboard (@flipboard) and Yahoo! JAPAN.

"These new partnerships open a significant opportunity to extend the reach of their message to a larger audience," Twitter's Ameet Ranadive said in a blog post.

Twitter says its new syndicated ads will be seen by users within Twitter content sections on third-party properties, as well as within third-party content areas.

For example, let’s say Nissan is running a Promoted Tweet campaign on Twitter, but also trying to reach a similar audience on a mobile application like Flipboard. Through this new partnership, Nissan could run a Promoted Tweet campaign on Twitter, with specific creative and targeting, and simultaneously run the campaign off Twitter, with the same targeting and creative in the Flipboard app.

Twitter has been under pressure to show both revenue and user growth following its highly anticipated 2013 initial public offering.