Twitter To Launch Commercial Services In 2010

Biz Stone, Twitter's co-founder, has revealed plans for paid-for business accounts that will be rolled out by early next year in a bid to bring much needed revenue streams to the microblogging behemoth.

In an interview with the BBC, the site's charismatic CEO, confirmed that Twitter will always remain free for everyone whether business users or individuals. However, paid-for commercial accounts will, he said, offer a "special layer of access" which will include feedback and statistics.

Twitter is currently valued at around $1 billion after having raised around $155 million over the last two years. However, developing a proper revenue model has been slow to come despite the fact that the service had undergone a massive explosion in traffic since it was founded in 2006.

Analytics firm Alexa shows that Twitter is now the thirteenth most visited website worldwide and has lately introduced a "what's happening" feature.

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Stone has also confirmed that Twitter could potentially ramp up its efforts to license and syndicate content with other internet companies like it did with Google and Bing already.

One can guess that Twitter will be going the Freemium way like Spotify whereby most of the basic features will be free and the more exclusive (and useful) ones will be paid for.

Twitter has already managed to recruit more than 6 million users worldwide (that was back in February 2009), a figure that is bound to reach 9-digit figures by the end of next year. Since the beginning of the month, Twitter has also signed deals with Orange and Linkedin.