According to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, the company plans to launch premium accounts that will provide customers with enhanced features and analytics. (Source: ClickZ)
So, the question is what will enhanced features and analytics mean?
In terms of analytics, Twitter could offer data such as how many times a tweet has been retweeted, how many times a link within a tweet had been clicked on, geo-location information now that the geotagging API is officially available, as well as information about how often a corporate name and brand has been mentioned over a certain of time.
While this information may be useful to some corporate customers, it is highly unlikely it will have an impact on the premium market for social media monitoring, which offers information above and beyond simply Twitter.
My sense is that Twitter Premium will likely be embraced by a minority of Twitter users. Many users will rely on other services such as Bit.ly, TweetStats and TwitterAnalyzer to get their analytics fix.
One Comment
There are too many programs and applications online that give me the satisfaction I need to measuring my stats. I think that Twitter is trying to hone in on that.
Therefore the minority that will apply for the premium accounts is the applications that tap into the API on a daily basis.