b2b news - Biz Stone, co-founder of micro-blogging social network site Twitter, announced Monday that by the end of the year, Twitter will introduce tools and services to help businesses serve their customers.
"We're looking at who's using Twitter and for what," Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York via videolink from San Francisco. "Are there any commercial usages that are making a lot of sense?"
The two-year-old, venture capital-backed company that lets people post brief messages called Tweets, has been riding out a tidal wave of growth in recent months. According to comScore data, visitors to Twitter jumped 83 percent in April from the previous month, to reach 17 million.
Twitter is searching for ways to make money from its popularity. Stone said "phase one" of that effort was spent collecting intelligence on how people use the service.
The second phase will see Twitter offering companies that wish to use Twitter to message customers tools and services on top of free micro-blogging for a fee.
It will be "simple stuff" such as lightweight analytics, Stone said. He reiterated the company's commitment to keeping the service free for everyone but added:
"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."
