Twitter Means Business

Twitter is in the process of introducing commercial accounts that will offer business users premium services such as detailed analytics, and its next step will be business-oriented application-programming interfaces that would create a “commercial layer” over its network, co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview with VentureBeat.

The social-networking platform already issued a guide for professional users, and it will offer certified accounts so that users can be sure the tweets they receive are actually from the companies or people they claim to be, and not impostors.

Stone told VentureBeat:

Twitter will still be free for everybody and we’ll still tell them to go crazy with it, but we’ve identified a selection of things that businesses say are helping to make them more profit. We want to build statistics or analytics that let users know: How am I doing on Twitter?

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.