Today, Twitter announces that they will begin charging companies for use of the Twitter platform providing them with a “special layer of access,” says co-founder Biz Stone. While enterprise level companies begin (or continue in some cases) to engage on Twitter and Twitter finds ways to monetize, this is one of the first overt steps toward marrying the two.
Don’t freak out yet, it’s not required to pay- personal accounts remain free and the “special layer of access” simply means that paid accounts receive feedback and statistics on their Twitter accounts.
Kyle Lacy, author of “Twitter Marketing for Dummies” said, “I am going to be honest and say that this reveals a game plan in terms of revenue generation. We all know Twitter needs to generate some type of revenue system before their VC funding collapses on top of them. I doubt that all accounts are going to be paid. It is going to be very rare to see social networking sites shift to an entirely closed ‘paid platform.’”
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Consumerism, Geo-mapping columnist
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The question is what will they deem a company? Will is be vague and offer them a chance to cancel accounts ala Flickr? What defines business use? I had heard they were coming with this eventually, but now I wonder how far they will take it. With a Realtor® population that is quite large and strong on Twitter, I suspect we’ll wind up in the crosshairs at some point.
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It’s optional, it’s like going from freemium with no analytics to premium with. Not a major move but I think it’s a show of their hand… could they begin masking traffic so you HAVE to buy an enterprise account? Probably not, but it’s worth considering as Twitter is now a mode of communication equivalent to the phone for many.