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Twitter to become a paid service?
Since launch, Twitter has enjoyed an increasing level of popularity as more people see the attraction to the instant-data feed on friends and family it provides. Businesses have also seen usefulness in the service, and “commercial” accounts are cropping up left and right – even Yahoo has found itself caught up in the Twitter craze. Given that the company behind the service has yet to advertise on the site and they have admitted to be spending more than what they actually make, there are rumors coming forth that Twitter may convert to a paid commercial service.
Committing to remain free for individual use, one of the Twitter co-founders has recently mentioned that the company has been looking for a way to charge for commercial accounts. Whether this means service fees, advertisement or other sources of income isn't mentioned, only that the company has noticed a trend for businesses to use the service and people to follow their posts. There's been no official announcement yet, but it's true that the company will at some point need to pay for itself. Will companies still see Twitter as attractive if it becomes a paid service for them?
Committing to remain free for individual use, one of the Twitter co-founders has recently mentioned that the company has been looking for a way to charge for commercial accounts. Whether this means service fees, advertisement or other sources of income isn't mentioned, only that the company has noticed a trend for businesses to use the service and people to follow their posts. There's been no official announcement yet, but it's true that the company will at some point need to pay for itself. Will companies still see Twitter as attractive if it becomes a paid service for them?
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User Comments (2)
Post a comment|
tengeta
on February 11, 2009 6:58 PM |
Businesses may lose interest, but its nothing they can't do with their own servers anyways. They were probably just using Twitter as a bandwidth cost free service to them. |
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Julio
on February 12, 2009 12:55 AM |
If twitter could pack their software and sell it to corporations for intranet-based messaging, maybe, just maybe that could work in terms of monetization but I'd say on a very limited basis.From my perspective, they will have a huge problem monetizing their reach as well we they pretend or wish for. A service that has always been free can't turn to paid that easily. Just think about it for a moment, would you pay a monthly fee for messenger or AIM if you had to, or just switch to another service eventually?Twitter could start showing ads but will that make up for the 20+ million invested in it so far? |
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