“How is Twitter going to make money?” – This is the question which seems to crop up again and again online. The latest suggestion comes from Todd Chaffee, an Institutional Venture Partners VC and Twitter board member, who suggested that Twitter may let businesses send branded direct messages.

He told the New York Times :

Commerce-based search businesses monetise extremely well, and if someone says, ‘What treadmill should I buy?’ you as the treadmill company want to be there. As people use Twitter to get trusted recommendations from friends and followers on what to buy, e-commerce navigation and payments will certainly play a role in Twitter monetisation.

I’m not sure how this would work but it doesn’t sound like something which I think would prove to be popular and it’s something which I think could be very easily abused. It doesn’t seem like any of this matters anyways as Twitters top man Evan Williams quickly responded to these suggestions :

Todd is not actually on Twitter’s board and, is brainstorming on his own. These are not in the least bit concrete plans of the company.

I found it a little strange that someone at a venture capital company would claim to be on the board of Twitter and no the ins and outs of a new business model. Seems like any mention of the word Twitter nowadays will get you the attention of a lot of news agencies!

Link : Twitter to make cash from branded direct messages

I spoke recently about how useful I find Trending Topics on Twitter. It’s a great place to find out about the latest news.

News is something which Twitter obviously takes seriously, as was illustrated this week with their recent rescheduling around the Iran Election Protest. Which is why is it was no surprise to read yesterday that Twitter are censoring their Twitter Trends area and removing inappropriate search results (spam/sex related).

It’s a good move from their part though if you want to see the true unmodified search results, you can always check the results from a Twitter portal, where the results won’t have been edited.

Twitter yesterday rescheduled downtime around the Iran Election Protest. Something which no doubt surprised a lot of people.

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

It just shows how important Twitter has become for reporting news. Clearly Twitter realises this as well or they wouldn’t have rescheduled. Nearly every major worldwide website schedules their downtime during nighttime in the USA as that is where most of their traffic comes from so doing the maintenence in the afternoon was a big surprise to a lot of people.

Link : Down Time Rescheduled

Less than a week after Twitter made the announcement about Verified Accounts, they have launched their beta version and have started verifying celebrities and well known businessmen and politicians.

The first person to get authorised seems to be internet celebrity officialTila. As I mentioned before, if you’re having problems with someone hijacking your personal name or product name, don’t get too excited as they only seem to be dealing with high profile people at the moment.

Without doubt, 2009 has been the year of Twitter, with their growth reaching astronomical levels in the first few months of the year. However, it doesn’t look like the 2nd half of the year will be as good for Twitter as the 1st.

First there was news from Nielson that 60% of Twitter users are not returning the next month. And today I read an article by David Weir which highlighted that Twitter only grew by 1.47% in May, which is incredibly low when you consider that Twitter has grew by 100% since March and a whopping 3700% in one year.

I don’t think that this illustrates that Twitter is a Fad but it wouldn’t surprise me if we see negative growth for the first time over the next 3 months.

Are you still using Twitter as much as you used to?

Over the weekend Biz Stone announced that Twitter will be testing out a new verified accounts system this summer.

The experiment will begin with public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation. We hope to verify more accounts in the future but due to the resources required, verification will begin only with a small set.

This development was no doubt in part because of the lawsuit that St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa delivered on Twitters doorstep because someone was impersonating him.

Impersonation violates Twitter’s Terms of Service and we take the issue seriously. We suspend, delete, or transfer control of accounts known to be impersonation. When alerted, we took action in this regard on behalf of St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

Reports this week that Twitter has settled a law suit and officially agreed to pay legal fees for an impersonation complaint that was taken care of by our support staff in accordance with our Terms are erroneous. Twitter has not settled, nor do we plan to settle or pay.

I was a little pissed off by start of this statement in which Biz stressed that they take the issue seriously and suspend, delete or or transfer control of accounts known to be impersonation. I have contacted Twitter a few times about people hijacking the Twitter usernames of domains/websites I own and they have never replied once.

I have seen a few other bloggers being pissed off about the fact that well known celebrities get their account back within a few days yet they won’t even bother looking into this kind of thing for your average joe. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that they must get a lot of complaints about hijacked accounts but they have to take some of the blame because hijacking is so damn easy to do on Twitter.

But, similar to Google, Twitter seem to respond incredibly quick when a big name or company complains about something. But the rest of us are not so lucky. Just recently Tyler Cruz had to choose @TylerCruzDotCom as his Twitter username because @TylerCruz was hijacked and Twitter did nothing about it.

I do think that Verified Accounts are a great addition to Twitter. However, for the majority of users, it won’t stop anyone hijacking your name. Twitter have said as much by stating that they are dealing with celebrities, athletes and public figures first.

Link : Not Playing Ball