Twitter will start asking businesses to pay for use December 5, 2009
Posted by leslie20 in Emerging Media, Twitter.Tags: disastera, news media, paid business accounts, twitter, value-added
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Before all the events of this past week hit my household, I had come across an article announcing that Twitter will be setting up a model by which businesses can pay for their Twitter accounts to “provide them with a ‘special layer of access’, including feedback and statistics”.
The article appeared on Telegraph.co.uk. (“Twitter launching paid business accounts, Nov. 23, 2009) Implications for the already $1 billion Twitter are tremendous as far as revenue. In an environment of focus on ROI for communication and marketing activities, a well-structured value-added business Twitter account should be well worth paying for.
The article notes that Twitter has not yet determined the business model for the paid service, but they have signed deals with Google and Bing to “integrate its real time search results into both search engines.” Both companies provide examples to look to for possible business models to consider what businesses may be willing to pay and what they want to get for their investment.
The company is also looking at partnerships which may include news media–ironically a group that engaged in a Twitter frenzy during the presidential campaign, often incorporating Twitter comments into newscasts. Ostensibly the arrangements would be related to the fact that often news of disasters and major events is coming through Twitter faster than news organizations with the first picture of the plane that went down in the Hudson River being shared on Twitter.
With the free-for-all exchange currently on Twitter, I would hope that individual users would find this new development to be a positive one. For businesses, paying to be able to better track the results of Twitter activities, to allow for adjusting how the company uses Twitter to communicate with customers, and provide a better justification to include Twitter in ongoing communication plans.
it was only a matter of time before Twitter started making money. And in turn it was only a matter of time before we, as marketers, are able to start making money on it. Some Twitter clients started putting ads into Twitter streams already, I personally use UberTwitter on my Blackberry and see ads when checking my accounts. The nice part about Twitter’s decision is that it seems they’re waiting for the right time and trying to launch a plan that is strategic and well thought out. They have also made it clear that product development is more important right now, which is also nice to hear.
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