Twitter announces launch of paid-for services for commercial users

Biz Stone, co-founder of micro-blogging site Twitter has announced that commercial users will soon be able to pay for a series of paid-for services.  The idea is to win over large companies--many of whom are already fans of the service--with extra tools to analyse their presence on the site.

Twitter, which is only a little over three years old, would now like to make some money from its incredible growth.  Its directors hope to finally find a way to turn a profit from their great idea, which arrived just as online social networks were beginning to emerge.  Back in September, the firm raised another 100 million dollars of capital, but it needs to be able to meet its monthly running costs, and in that regard, it's like plenty of other online services that are free to users.

Moving towards a sustainable economic model

According to Stone, the site should 'begin to earn money next year,' thanks in part to these new tools that will allow bloggers, companies and other content providers to optimise their use of the site by finding out more about their followers and keeping up with emerging trends more closely.  Advertising is also set to appear on the site soon too.

For the moment, though, nothing has changed for everyday users, and it won't for a while, apart from the arrival of ads, but Twitter is joining a growing number of sites that have adopted a very effective model.  There's no reason why the strategy that has worked for so many others won't work here: launch a free site, sign up plenty of enthusiastic users and get them hooked--and then add a commercial aspect that won't turn away too many of your fans.  It's yet another piece of evidence that there's no such thing as a free lunch--even on the Internet.

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