There’s been a lot of talk about the proposed revenue model for Twitter which will seek to monetise businesses and brands using the microblogging service. But as yet none of the paid services has appeared – but one business-specific feature is now in a limited beta test.
It’s called ‘Contributors’ and manages multiple users to a single account by placing the byline of the user to their tweet on the main account. Imagine @Biz tweeting as part of the @Twitter account.
It’s supported by the API and interesting, the post revealing it on the official blog explains that it’s in beta to get feedback, but then says:
‘After we kick the tires a bit, we’ll do a full launch to all business users and ecosystem partners. Stay tuned!’
Could this be the first paid service? It’s definitely something which will make managing a multiple user account (as I do) a fair bit easier – if you’ve got a long brand name as your Twitter username, you often find there’s no room for attribution on a multiple user account.
But I’m not sure many businesses would pay (if this is released as part of the revenue plan). Although it’s a hassle, I’m not sure it’s enough of a pain to justify payment to sort – but it does show that the Twitter team are definitely focusing on the business users who could pay their bills
I am interested to see how this gets incorporated into tools like co-tweet. Will they adopt Twitter's model or go around it? If Twitter charges for this feature, who pays?