Twitter Launching Paid Business Accounts from 2010

In recent past, we’ve seen corporates utilize Twitter’s services more and more to get in touch with their customers. But Twitter has to make some money too. That’s why the micro-blogging service is set to launch paid business accounts next year, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

But no need to worry Corporate Companies. It’s NOT the end of the world for you; not yet. You guys will still be allowed to use Twitter for free, unless you want to go for the Premium accounts. Rather, it is a good news that twitter is planning to add a special layer of access to the business people who would sign up for a paid account. This special access layer will include some analytics, feedback and more features.

“Businesses are under no obligation to sign up to a paid account, but doing so will provide them with a “special layer of access”, including feedback and statistics”, said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. “This takes advantage of some of the commercial use of Twitter we’ve seen from businesses like airlines and big box stores,” said Stone. “We want to present to them a layer of features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics.”

Apparently they have not yet finalized the business model but it would be a nice welcome revenue source for the microblogging platform which is currently valued at $1 billion. Last month, Twitter signed deals with Google and Microsoft Bing to integrate its real-time search results in to both search engines.

This is a clear indication that twitter is slowly but steadily making its position as the source for news and other useful information. I just hope they don’t have “levels” of paid accounts based on followers for example. This is a very good idea. I’ve already noticed small businesses messaging me back when I mention their services and products; clearly, they’re taking some time out of their day to manage their Twitter reputation.

Given the breadth of different companies I know have been involved with Twitter (from small local restuarants to boutique culinary appliance manufacturers to Comcast), there must be thousands of companies who would pay for this service, especially if Twitter can lower the barrier to entry for them and provide metrics so that company Twitter advocates can gin up some kind of ROI.

Access to stats and a “verified” marker would be huge for businesses. I know people who used to pay Yahoo Mail ~$20/year just so that they didn’t have to see banner ads on the right hand side (This was before the advent of GMail). For the value that Twitter Business Accounts will provide to businesses, a basic fee of hundred of dollars per month sounds reasonable, and then added features could cost extra. I know I would pay if I were a Dell or a JetBlue. But I imagine whichever route they choose, and no matter what cost, they’ll sell anyway. What do you think?