It'd be hard to work out, but I'm all for premium fees for businesses that are using Twitter mainly as a sales or marketing channel. By all means, let the monthly fee pay for a more enhanced account, but have some form of business cost involved. LinkedIn does it pretty successfully – why not Twitter?

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your view, appreciate it.

Initially, I think the best way to handle this is to put some form of fee on Corporate accounts. Corporations (including brands and agencies) send endorsements that theoretically impact their ROI. If their endorsements have been effective thus far, it would make sense that a monthly/annual flat usage fee would be reasonable. For those who have not yet tested Twitter to see if it works, I think there are plenty of case studies that show the benefits.

As others have said, endorsements are often not suitable for individual accounts. This is why initially, I think there needs to be a distinction. Corporate accounts cost (a small) chunk of change. Individual accounts don't.

Perhaps a model such as this could even reduce the number of accounts wherein there is endorsement abuse; promotional link after link with little reader value?

There is clearly some monetary value for a promotional tweet. It will be interesting to see what Twitter decides that is.

I agree – as I mention to Kendra, 140 characters just doesn't allow you to offer a view when your space is taken up with ads or endorsements. At least, not the full view. And that seems to be what the main issue would be about.

But if it's a bona-fide account that you interact with, and you've built up trust in that person and vice versa, then suddenly seeing endorsements that seem out of place would make me think about the relationship. I know it's not that way for everyone, and that's fair play, as I mentioned in the post.

With regards Chris, that whole episode was laughable. It wasn't on his normal blog, it was clearly stated (numerous times) it was sponsored, and it wasn't a kiss-ass review. And I wonder how many people that laid into it saw the follow-up about how the gifts were given away?

Thanks for sharing your view, always appreciated Hendry.

And thanks for the vote of confidence – I'll try not to let you down if it ever happens

With Twitter, this may be different. I agree, some followers don't think about this as a medium to communicate, but just another content channel to get what they want. If my audience comprises of mostly this type of people — perhaps more appropriately called subscribers — then I think this is more acceptable. Transparency and honesty are still keys here though.

On the other hands, if Twitter is a way for me to keep in touch with people who I treat as friends and partners, perhaps paid endorsements are not suitable. I mean, do you hang out with friends and in the middle of the party suddenly sell tupperware? Even if your friends know that is an endorsement, it simply is not appropriate.

It's more or less like the pay per post model. I used to think it was a bad thing and it would ruin the whole blogging thing. In its simplest form, blogger talks about a product or brand and gets paid for it. This is nothing but pollution from the search engine perspective because with it more and more people are going to discover untrusted content.

However, with the new model that taps into the community around or behind a blog instead of just "buying links and getting a brand mentioned" this is entirely different. (I refer to recent sponspored post in Chris Brogran's daddy blog.)

Just thought I'd pitch in with my non-professional, regular Jo response.