Tonight I decided to go ahead and help Twitter get the ball rolling towards a Business Model that includes paid offerings.  With the funding they have received thus far, I have little doubt they have a team of individuals working diligently to understand and create a roadmap that includes compelling functionality (benefits) that existing and new users will not only be receptive to, but also be willing to pay for.

Since creating my Twitter account, it has enabled me to connect with a number of individuals that, without Twitter, we wouldn't even know each other exist.  Therefore, I am dropping my first Twitter payment in the mail tomorrow. 

I can think of many potential offerings and pricing structures that would make sense for Twitter to begin A/B testing.  Without knowing what they have in the works, I really cannot recommend any specifics, but I am thinking they will certainly retain a FREE offering which will likely be the service as it is today. 

A price point that I am throwing out there that seems feasible is an $8.95 per month / $89.50 per year option.  Again, I really don't know what that option would include, but the service has so many possibilities I believe they can develop additional beneficial features that would fit that price point.  Consider this: if 500,000 users opted for $89.50 per year offering, that would translate into $44,750,000.00 per year.

Again, depending on their overall feature set and roadmap, I would recommend that when they do launch their paid offerings . . . it likely will make sense for them to have 4 offerings total. 

Something like this:

         |      FREE      |      3.95 (39.50)      |      8.95 (89.50)      |      17.95 (179.50)      |

If you go to the Twitter contact page you will see a link titled, "How do you make money from Twitter?"  The image above is what that page displays currently and note the portion I highlighted.  That won't last forever and the leadership team has some key decisions to make, and they'll want to begin making those decisions soon (I think some have already been made, and they are testing at some level.  Possibly preparing to launch in mid August or early September).