Twitter: We Won't Charge Companies for Accounts

Yesterday rumors did the rounds about Twitter charging companies who use the service for commercial purposes. While Twitter currently doesn’t charge businesses for tweeting, a report in Marketing magazine hinted that the company was thinking about it. Twitter has since rushed to put the rumors generated by Marketing mag’s report to rest.

Co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, told Marketing magazine: "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".

However, apparently this isn’t really what Twitter was trying to say. The company said via its official blog that it has been thinking about growing the use of Twitter by companies, brands and commercial organizations, but maintained that Twitter will remain free for everyone to use -- including companies. Check out the full blog post below.

“There was a sudden burst of news early this week surrounding some ideas we've shared publicly for quite some time. We've been thinking out loud for more than a year about the growing use of Twitter by companies, brands, and other commercial organizations. It's great that both individuals and organizations are finding value in Twitter and there may be ways we can enrich the experience. In fact, we hope to begin iterating on revenue products this year.

However, it's important to note that whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone—individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we're thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services. We are still very early in the idea stage and we don't have anything to share just yet despite a recent surge in speculation. When we do, we'll be sure to let you know.”

We said yesterday that we thought it was a great idea to charge companies for commercial use of Twitter. News updates are useful and should be free, however advertisements are a different ball game and since the same companies would have to pay for ads on any other social networking site, we feel Twitter should be no exception. What do you think of the commercial use of Twitter, yay or nay?