Twitter confirms "paid-for" accounts on way

 

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By Stuart Turton and Reuters

Posted on 26 Mar 2009 at 09:12

Twitter is taking its first tentative steps into making the service pay by offering select customers an expanded range of services.

The company will offer paid-for accounts to businesses towards the end of the year. Though the company has yet to confirm what additional services theses businesses will be privy to, founder Biz Stone suggested they would likely include lightweight analytics to track people reading the company's page, and compile better records on what they're saying.

There's also suggestions there'll be tools to verify companies and introduce them to potential customers via Twitter.

"We think there will be opportunities to provide services to commercial entities that help them get even more value out of Twitter. If these services are valuable to companies, we think they may want to pay for them," says Stone.

San Francisco-based Twitter has enjoyed a surge in popularity since its creation three years ago, despite the fact that the company has yet to make any money.

According to Nielsen Online, which measures internet traffic, Twitter's website had more than seven million unique visitors in February, compared to 475,000 in February 2008.

Last year, the company turned down a $500 million acquisition offer by social networking powerhouse Facebook. Observers have also speculated that Google might have its eye on the microblogging site.

Twitter initially planned to begin seeking revenue in 2010, however it recently decided it needed to accelerate the schedule and find ways to earn revenue this year.

"We have lots of time for experimentation with regard to revenue generation, so we'll probably be trying a few different things this year," says Stone.