The guys running the show at Twitter (biz and ev — sure, way to steal the short names, guys!) are probably really sick of hearing people quote Cuba Gooding Jr. in that Jerry McGuire movie — “Show me the money!!” but it’s comforting to know they have a couple ideas about harnessing their baby’s power to make some.
Co-founder Biz Stone told Marketing: ‘We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.’ He would not be drawn on the level of charges.
So the plan seems to be to charge firms for extra features and for the ability to verify their accounts. That way regular users will know that they’re really on Dell’s twitter page and not on some impostor’s phishing page.
That’s becoming more of an issue than you might imagine — and not just for billion dollar hardware companies. The Dalai Lama himself was brandjacked earlier this week. A Twitter account reputing to be the official page of the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama was started and quickly shot up in popularity, reaching 16,000 followers in just a few days. The only problem was that it was not real.
Since Twitter’s detective services don’t run cheap, it only makes sense to charge companies a fee to verify their identity. But Twitter has to keep the fee and the hassle to a minimum for this to work or they risk driving away the brands that could make them successful long term. And they must avoid charging regular users or their site will plummet in popularity. It’s quite the fine line to walk. Good luck, boys!