Social networking micro-blogging site Twitter will introduce new tools for business by the end of the year and may even charge for their use, co-founder Biz Stone announced.
At the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York this week, Stone announced through a video conference that the company will introduce new commercial products over two phases.
The company (which is two years old and has just 29 employees) has been rumoured to be searching for ways to monetise its popularity.
The site has experienced rapid growth over the past year, jumping from 475,000 unique visitors per month in February 2008 to seven million in February 2009, according to Nielson Online.
The first phase of Twitter’s push into the business sector will involve market research to find out how businesses and individuals are using the service every day.
“We’re looking at who’s using Twitter and for what. Are there any commercial usages that are making a lot of sense?” Stone said.
The second phase will involve the site announcing and launching the new tools along with its existing platform, which asks users to type messages 140 characters long about what they are doing.
But Stone said businesses shouldn’t get too excited just yet, with the products to be released just “simple stuff”, including analytics tools.
But he did say that companies may end up paying for the services.
“If there is a way we can go above and beyond, and they (companies) can improve bottom line by offering services we can offer for a fee, (we) will do that,” he said.
Businesses have been taking advantage of Twitter since its introduction to the web. Gourmet food trucks in the United States are now popular for “tweeting” their location every few hours, resulting in long queues every time a new message is sent.
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Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
