Priming The Revenue Pump, Twitter Tests Multi-Account Support

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Thanks largely to its search deals with Bing and Google, Twitter is already making revenue. But that income is not the where Twitter expects its true business model to lie. Instead, it believes that will come from premium features given to businesses that wish to use Twitter. Thus far, Twitter has yet to enable such features. But starting today, it’s beginning to test what is likely to be one of them.

As it notes on its blog, Twitter is testing a new feature it calls “Contributors.” Basically, this allows business accounts to be controlled by multiple Twitter users. Yes, it’s a form of multi-account support. For example, if any of us who work for TechCrunch were given the proper permission by the account owner, we could control this account from our own individual Twitter accounts. This includes the ability to DM people, follow new users, and most importantly, tweet from it. And if you were to tweet from it using your own account, your Twitter name would be appended onto the bottom of that tweet (see image).

Many companies, such as TechCrunch, already allow multiple people to handle their main account, but it is a pain having to log out and log back into the different accounts. Many third-party services offer multi-account support, but those don’t offer a way to see which team member is actually in control of the account at the time of a tweet, this will. And there is an API for all of this as well.

Twitter is quick to note that this is “not ready for prime-time” and that this is only being tested with a limited subset of people so they can figure out how to best implement it. More importantly, that means that this feature is not yet a way for Twitter to make money. But again, it seems logical that this will eventually be one of the premium features the service offers down the road.

Back in July, Twitter launched step one of it’s business plan, with the Twitter 101 guide. Consider this step two.