Twitter Launching Paid Business Accounts

This is a very good idea. I've already noticed small businesses messaging me back when I mention their services and products; clearly, they're taking some time out of their day to manage their Twitter reputation.<p>Given the breadth of different companies I know have been involved with Twitter (from small local restuarants to boutique culinary appliance manufacturers to Comcast), there must be thousands of companies who would pay for this service, especially if Twitter can lower the barrier to entry for them and provide metrics so that company Twitter advocates can gin up some kind of ROI.

Bingo. Access to stats and a "verified" marker would be huge for businesses.<p>I just hope they don't have "levels" of paid accounts based on followers for example. A single $20-$50 per year would make sense to me. But I imagine whichever route they choose, and no matter what cost, they'll sell anyway.

"Twitter, which is valued at around $1 billion, has yet to settle on a business model for the service..."

I'm assuming Twitter will design a way to charge large companies significantly higher fees and less for small companies and startups.