A false report on BBSpot.com hit the net today proposing that the popular social networking tool/time waster, Twitter has unveiled a brand new pricing structure, apparently aimed at large organizations and corporations. Your regular old Twitter account will still be free but they’re adding on special features for those users who want to shell out the big bucks. The tiered pricing structure includes oh-so-adorable names such as sparrow (at $5/month) all the way up to Eagle(at $250/month). They also allude to a top secret special bonus tier called “Black” which I’m sure will be reserved for the creme de la creme and will allow people to tweet directly into your brain without the use of any computer at all.
This is all a big fat lie. Follow the outraged response here.
I do think Twitter does need to figure out a way to monetize. I do use the service and I’d like to see it keep going. Without a real revenue stream, the money will eventually dry up.
Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo has apparently jokingly suggested that Twitter sell the “twitterers you should follow” section when you first sign up. He said he would pay $250,000 to be on that list for two years.
I’m not sure that a premium account would be such a bad idea. They could sell it to the big companies who don’t naturally fit into Twitter and they could help integrate Twitter naturally into their marketing strategies. I know Twitter wouldn’t be able to sell ads on their site since very few people I know who tweet ever actually visit the site. Most people use other applications to read and write their tweets.
Would you pay for a subscription service? I know I wouldn’t. Most previously free services (like Jott) that go to pay models, I usually abandon. I would hope that if Twitter does do some kind of pay service, that it’s core services remain free.