Twitter is planning to provide exclusive access to advanced Tweetdeck for its paid members. Twitter, which is free to join at the moment, might provide membership for business users. The micro-blogging website has been struggling to grow its number of members in recent years. Twitter has been trying to find out "assess interest" through surveys.
Tweetdeck will be accessible in its enhanced version to its paid members. Tweetdeck will be more functional than the parent website. A premium membership might give a new revenue flow to Twitter, which is facing a tough fight from rival apps like Snapchat. Twitter has not indicated if it will start charging its regular users as well.
Twitter said in a statement that it regularly conducts research to find out people's Twitter experience. It also tries to inform the users about its product investment decisions. The micro-blogging platform has plans to provide more value to professionals with Tweetdeck.
According to the BBC, Twitter informed a number of users through email that the premium tool set would provide valuable tools for posting, signaling and viewing. It will give them data about activity and trends analysis, posting tools, alerts and advanced analytics. Everything will come in a customizable dashboard, Twitter says.
Twitter is struggling with its advertising revenues, which happen to be the company's only major income stream at the moment. The numbers are falling, even though the online ad market has seen a consistent growth since last year.
If Twitter manages to convince users to go for the paid accounts, it will have a direct competition with platforms like HootSuite and SocialFlow, which have a dedicated user base at the moment. These companies have been helping members use Twitter in a more effective manner for many years now.
Twitter hired a product manager in 2009 to develop premium features. However, that never got materialized. Now that it has started talking about having paid members, a source told The Verge that the site has not started building the service yet. It is conducting the survey to finalize the roadmap for the said service.
