Twitter plans to introduce premium tools and services to help businesses serve their current and potential customers by the end of this year..
Business Products
Although there have been rumors and discussion about potential business products on the horizon, it was Twitter co-founder Biz Stone who officially confirmed the news at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.
Stone said that Twitter’s plan focused on two core phases:
Phase one has and is being spent collecting intelligence on how people use the service.
The second phase will see Twitter launching tools and services on top of free micro-blogging, these premium tools will be aimed at companies that wish to use Twitter to stay in touch with customers.
Regarding the type of products, although there was no definite answer, Stone says it will be “simple stuff” such as lightweight analytics.
“If there is a way we can go above and beyond, and they (companies) can improve bottom line by offering services we can offer for a fee, (we) will do that.”
He made it clear that a Twitter advertising revenue model was not on the cards and that at no point would they charge users for using the current product offering.
Growth
Another fascinating nugget from the interview was in regard to Twitter’s growth rate. Stone pointed out that the Twitter team are fully aware that their current growth rate is unsustainable. According to their statistics, if they continue to grow at this rate – they will run out of people on planet Earth by the end of the year.
Which begs the question, are we really alone? :)
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