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Comment by bullseye | Hacker News Reader

I just don't see this being embraced by more than a handful of companies. Some brands are still just trying to understand how to use this for marketing purposes. Then you have the headache of policing the personal accounts that promote brands of employers.

As much as I would like to see a unique web company succeed, this doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they (Twitter) have a solid 2009 revenue plan.

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"We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts." - Biz Stone

Sounds like opting for a commercial account would bring additional features, not just require businesses to pay for what's now free.

Exactly right, maxwell. Charging certain customers more, just because of who they are, is not a great business strategy :)

I think this fear is overblown. You already see educational institutions and individuals paying different prices for box software compared to business users. Large and medium-sized businesses also probably wouldn't cheat the fee system. Again, look to boxed software: would a major company run pirated copies of Office 2007? It would be pretty easy for them to, but it's not a huge expense and if anyone found out than it would be extremely embarrassing. (It would be much easier to find out about businesses cheating with twitter just by having some superficial distinction like a badge or icon on the twitter site for paid users)

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