After speculation throughout this year, Biz Stone has told the BBC that Twitter will start providing paid for commercial accounts in 2010. He emphasised that the existing functionality would remain free, but that businesses could pay for extra functionality and perks.
- The functionality could include(as speculated by bloggers everywhere)
- Guaranteed site performance (as opposed to fail whale)
- Account verification (saying this account is actually who it says it is)
I think businesses could do without the analytics, they could do without a site performance guarantee. They could definitely do without any improvements in functionality of their Tweets, private messages, or follower groups, and keep it to a simple format. BUT how well will businesses do without verification, if verification becomes the 'expectation'. In an increasingly spammed online world, where trust is turning out to be paramount, a verification could very well be the key to making money out of Twitter. (Of course this can be gotten around by listing your Twitter account in your official press releases or business website, but it doesn't cover all bases).
In a news conference in Tel Aviv, Biz Stone told reporters that their new model of advertising will be 'untraditional', which paid accounts in social media certainly are. Or perhaps Twitter, with their millions of investment capital, has come up with something completely different altogether.
