Twitter: Free For Now; Fees in the Future

"Twitter co-founders are mum on revenue plans"
The Associated Press (May 27, 2009)

"Twitter Inc.'s co-founders say the rapidly growing online communications company will eventually charge fees for its services, but it's unclear which ones and what will drive revenue.

" 'There will be a moment when you can fill out a form or something and give us money,' said Evan Williams, co-founder and chief executive officer.

" 'We're working on it right now,' Williams said at The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference...."

Twitter's been growing fast. The AP article notes that it employs 43 people: "double" the number it did in January. That must be an approximation, unless Twitter had half a person running around then. Or, more plausibly, had someone working part-time.

The article is a pretty good glance at an online service or community that's gone through very fast growth recently.

I hope that the individual Twitter accounts remain free. I'm a Twitterer (I'm Aluwir there): but have no budget for online memberships right now.

I've met some interesting people there - as well as friends and acquaintances from other networking sites.

Some of the possibilities mentioned by the article for Twitter making money make sense - like the option to pay for a verification service, so that someone couldn't pretend to be an existing business, and set up a Twitter account as that business.

Although I couldn't afford it at any price, I have no problem with Twitter making money: maintaining a service like that takes effort - and someone has to pay for the connections and servers.