Revolution magazine is reporting that Twitter founder Biz Stone has said that the microblogging platform will release additional tools for businesses later this year:

“Twitter will launch a range of tools later this year aimed at helping both big brands and small businesses use the microblogging service, co-founder Biz Stone has revealed to Revolution.

“Stone told Revolution that Twitter’s long awaited commercial model is likely to focus on generating revenue through add-on tools aimed at businesses of all sizes, rather than advertising.”

Kudos to the guys at Revolution for the scoop, even if this was largely expected. The full interview is in the mag’s June issue, out tomorrow.

I’m all for web businesses trying to avoid building their businesses on deteriorating advertising revenues, but the Twitter move is very interesting.

Twitter is a fantastic tool for businesses, both for marketing and customer service and it is very interesting to see Stone acknowledging this and making efforts to support this use case:

“We think there are opportunities to support commercial use. How can we help a small bakery Twittering that the cookies are coming out of the oven and the big company using Twitter for customer support? We will be looking ways to encourage and support this.”

I’m excited to see what the tools will be. Excited to see how we can use them with our clients. And intrigued to learn whether Twitter users will continue to embrace a platform that will be driven by commercial objectives.

The beauty of Twitter is that it is opt-in. This could be a winning formula.

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