Twitter to Charge?
Twitter is further solidifying plans to implement a premium account structure for "power" users or companies.
Co-Founder Biz Stone confirmed that the company recently hired a product manager to develop commercial accounts, but reiterated that the service would be "free to use by everyone," and for-profit services would be add-ons.
In other words, users would pay a small nominal fee for additional services. No launch date has been set, however, on these commercial features.
There was no specificity afforded about the type of features that may be offered for a fee, but sites like Business Insider have a few speculations:
We could see a lot of companies paying $10 or $20 a month for the service, even for simple tools. But we could also see many companies — Comcast, JetBlue, Starbucks, etc. — paying more than one hundred dollars per month for really good, insightful tools.
In an email to the publication, Stone confirmed the trick would be to find services that will "improve the experience."
"Will it be account verification? Will it be lightweight analytics? Will there be opportunities for introducing customers to businesses on Twitter[?] So many questions. But the key is to understand that Twitter will remain free for all to use—individuals and companies alike," he persisted.
Recent figures from Nielsen pegged Twitter's year-on-year growth at an astronomical 1,382%.
Hoping to harness that traffic, a handful of services have tried leveraging the company's present dearth of a business model. Magpie enables users to sell their "tweets" and Twitter backgrounds as ad space. Each user is paid according to his number of followers. And ExecTweets, a Microsoft-sponsored site launched by Federated Media this month, displays tweets from business executives. Twitter receives a cut of the profit.
Co-Founder Biz Stone confirmed that the company recently hired a product manager to develop commercial accounts, but reiterated that the service would be "free to use by everyone," and for-profit services would be add-ons.
In other words, users would pay a small nominal fee for additional services. No launch date has been set, however, on these commercial features.
There was no specificity afforded about the type of features that may be offered for a fee, but sites like Business Insider have a few speculations:
We could see a lot of companies paying $10 or $20 a month for the service, even for simple tools. But we could also see many companies — Comcast, JetBlue, Starbucks, etc. — paying more than one hundred dollars per month for really good, insightful tools.
In an email to the publication, Stone confirmed the trick would be to find services that will "improve the experience."
"Will it be account verification? Will it be lightweight analytics? Will there be opportunities for introducing customers to businesses on Twitter[?] So many questions. But the key is to understand that Twitter will remain free for all to use—individuals and companies alike," he persisted.
Recent figures from Nielsen pegged Twitter's year-on-year growth at an astronomical 1,382%.
Hoping to harness that traffic, a handful of services have tried leveraging the company's present dearth of a business model. Magpie enables users to sell their "tweets" and Twitter backgrounds as ad space. Each user is paid according to his number of followers. And ExecTweets, a Microsoft-sponsored site launched by Federated Media this month, displays tweets from business executives. Twitter receives a cut of the profit.
Labels: Twitter
posted by RoMay J. Allen at 9:55 AM
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