Twitter: Premium Features for Brands Possible, Nothing to Announce

Twitter may begin charging brands and other commercial users for premium features such as identity verification, as Marketing Magazine and a gaggle of other sites reported yesterday. But the micro-blogging platform wants everyone to know its monetization plans are still very much in the early stages.

In a comment to Marketing earlier this week, Biz Stone said, "We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them," he said. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts."

Now Stone has clarified the remark with a simmer-down-now post to the Twitter blog.

"It's great that both individuals and organizations are finding value in Twitter and there may be ways we can enrich the experience," he writes. "What we're thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services."

Stone went on to insist, as the company always does, that the site and its features will remain free to both individual and corporate users.