14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter shouldn't be in any hurry to make money. While it's still to earn anything, the company is sitting on a generous amount of funding that should allow it to focus on the other aspects of the business, at least for a while. However, it's feeling the pressure to start generating revenue and cofounder Biz Stone is restating what he already said a couple of months ago: Twitter will start making money this year and one way it's going to do it is with paid business accounts.
Stone told Venture Beat that Twitter was on its way to launching business services that should entice most commercial users to pay for the advanced features. One feature that should be very attractive to business users is the ability keep track of detailed analytics, letting businesses know exactly how well or how badly they are doing and where to focus their attention, and which actions generate the best reactions from customers.
Twitter's cofounder stresses the fact that the service will continue to be free, for anyone involved, and that this isn't going to change anytime soon. Businesses with Twitter accounts won't be “forced” to pay to use the platform. That would drive off a good part of the commercial users and also put the company in a negative light. What's more, it would sometimes be hard to discern which accounts are for business use and which are for personal use. So Twitter is trying to make them want to pay by offering services that bring additional value.
However, moving in with an analytics service could put Twitter in direct competition with some of the many third-party apps and services that have grown around the platform. This is something that worries Stone as well but he is promising a brand-new set of commercial APIs that would allow outside developers to build their own business services around Twitter. While Stone isn't saying when exactly the premium accounts and services will become available, Twitter has already made a first small step towards better business offerings with Twitter 101, a site dedicated to helping brands and businesses understand and make the most out of the platform.