Twitter plans new features for corporate users

Micro-blogging service Twitter will be introducing premium features for business users by year-end, co-founder Biz Stone said Tuesday.

While Stone and his fellow co-founder, Evan Williams, have long floated the idea of commercial accounts, “we’re only just now entering a phase in Twitter’s lifetime where we’re able to develop new products,” Stone said in an interview. He is in Chicago to give a talk Tuesday evening at Columbia College.

Much of the last couple of years have been spent building up Twitter’s infrastructure to keep pace with rapid growth, Stone said. By the end of the year, he plans to introduce features for corporate users that will “make them better Twitterers.” The site will remain free for all users, including businesses. But commercial users may pay more for features such as analytics, which would allow them to monitor traffic and the behavior of people who “follow” them on Twitter.

Speaking broadly about how people use Twitter, Stone said he’s observed them “performing this social alchemy — this process that takes place when you decide to share information openly.” An individual tweeting that he’s drinking a beer at a particular bar may not be significant, for example. But if someone else who’s in the area sees that tweet and joins the first person, and they come up with a new business idea, they’ve turned “lead into gold,” Stone said.

“Twitter has always been about getting people away from their computer” so they go out into the world, then report back what they’ve seen, Stone said. He believes this phenomenon has the potential for social change, rather than simply feeding consumers’ addiction to their computer and mobile phone screens. Earlier this year, for example, protesters in Iran used Twitter to communicate with each other and disseminate information to millions of readers worldwide.

Most companies ban Twitter on job

Most companies ban social networking while on the job, according to a survey from Robert Half Technology.

More than half (54 percent) of chief information officers said their firms prohibit employees from visiting such social networking sites as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace while on the clock.

The survey was based on interviews with more than 1,400 CIOs from U.S. companies with 100 or more employees.

“Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology.

But about one in five companies (19 percent) allow employees to surf the sites for work-related purposes, 16 percent allow it for limited for personal use and 10 percent say it’s permitted for any type of personal use.

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