Everyone seems to be on Myspace and Facebook, but lately Twitter has been making more and more of an appearance in articles on the social marketing forums online as well as general news. This posting shows however, what the primary goal of any internet service appears to be – to make money. Twitter has been searching for ways to make money off their users, not just provide a service for them, and have come to the decision that by charging business account holders, that they will be able to generate some revenue to keep going. It also brings up an important question though, when talking about how they will figure out costs for commercial accounts. Where do you draw the line – yes you can have an official commercial account, but what about those who just “trickle in bits of self promotion here and there, ” and do you only charge the big guys. It’s a question that has been asked in many scenarios, for example with music downloading – should you only pay to download the small and lesser known artists, and not the big artists that have more money, or should you be charged for each of them? It may be more beneficial for Twitter to take a page from Facebook and offer advertising space for ‘pay per click’ or ‘pay per view’ as Facebook does, and make a more steady income that way. It would also keep the accounts free, as one of the drawbacks we discussed last week about PB Wiki is that you have to pay for more services, unlike google docs where you get an account with everything you need for free.
