Twitter to Charge Companies to Use Their Platform

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.’”