Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone has suggested that companies should be charged for corporate accounts on Twitter, as the popular micro-blogging service attempts to monetise the zeitgeist.
The massive explosion of Twitter has thrust it bodily into the limelight and Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone told Marketing Magazine, that the companies jumping on the bandwagon had been noted.
"We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them, said Stone.
"We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts."
Individual or company?
Although there is no suggestion that individuals would be charged, the immediate question raised would be what constitutes a company twitter feed.
If you take a renowned Tweeter like The Guardian's Jemima Kiss, for instance, her Twitter feed is concerned with both her work and her life and probably couldn't be considered a company feed.
However, you could argue that part of her following is because of her profession and that by linking to a commercial site and her own stories she is acting on behalf of her corporation.
For other 'individual' twitter feeds the balance is even more towards propagating professional sites' articles.
Shades of grey
It would appear to be very much a grey area, which presumably companies might well try to exploit rather than pay for a corporate account.
Unless, of course, Twitter can come up with a mutually beneficial reason for companies to agree to pay for the service, which might well not prove popular to the Twitter community.
