Surprise! Twitter still thinking about a revenue model

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Apparently Twitter is so hot among news folks right now that the company doesn’t even need to say anything new to make headlines.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. (Credit: Mai Le via Flickr)

TechCrunch, along with dozens of other online news sources, ran with a statement that co-founder Biz Stone made to a British trade magazine, Marketing, about Twitter charging for corporate accounts.

Stone and co-founder Evan Williams have been murmuring about the likely business model for some time now -- we and the New York Times both covered it in December.

The idea is to provide premium features to businesses that elect to sign up for premium accounts. One such feature Stone shared with us was an account verification tool, which would’ve come in handy recently with the Dalai Lama fiasco.

Stone never seemed to give the impression that companies would be required to pay for such accounts, but that’s exactly the conclusion that some bloggers drew from today’s resurfacing of the news. He put those concerns to rest in a company blog post this afternoon.

‘Twitter will remain free to use by everyone -- individuals, companies, celebrities, etc.,’ Stone wrote. ‘What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services.’

There’s no additional news on the Twitter revenue front at this point. But you can be sure we and every other tech blogger on the planet will report it as soon as it happens. And maybe even again a few months earlier.

-- Mark Milian