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In an article released today, Brian Womack of Bloomberg.com reports that Twitter is exploring revenue models that include charging businesses to use Twitter, rather than seek additional venture capital funding. The company has already raised $22 million in funds, but with the current state of the economy, Twitter CEO Evan Williams says, “the VCs have the money, but they’ll just negotiate harder” wanting a larger return on investment.

According to the article, Williams said that Twitter may charge businesses to reach users. This may include opt-in coupon promotions, market research and display advertising. “I want to manage things so I don’t have to raise money in 2009,” Williams said.

The article also states that “global visitors to Twitter rose almost fivefold to 5.57 million in September from a year earlier.”

Okay, I admit it.  I’m important to me.  But for businesses, many things are important.  Your brand, your products, mentions of things within your industry.

TweetBeep allows you to enter search strings that are run at regular intervals and, if there is a hit, it mails them to you.

You simply enter the search string and whether you want it to send you information every hour or every day.

You can even search for information from specific users or to specific users, as well as tweets in a specific location.

If you own a restaurant with a fairly common name, you can only search tweets from people in the area.

TweetBeep can help automate your data mining and market research efforts on Twitter.

A very handy, free tool all the way around.

Jim Benson is a partner at Modus Cooperandi and blogs at Evolving Web. Jim is a management consultant who uses social media tools and principles to help his clients communicate. Follow him on Twitter.

Guest Post by Becky McCray

Lorie cites these direct results from Twitter:

• Allowed me to build a relationship with important industry partner, resulting soon in an article on their website that will also be emailed out to their 250k mailing list.

• Met a guy who tweeted me he was putting together a group of local Austin internet marketers. Went to the first meeting, I met a very well-known internet marketer who wants a demo DVD of me to share with one of his partners! Not sure what will happen yet with that. Also met about 25 of My Peeps who speak the same language of SEO, Twitter, blogging, sales letters, etc. Just the beginning on that group, lots of great possibilities.

• Met another person in my industry because she followed me, whom I did not realize had an online store. We ended up talking and she is now carrying my closet product. Cha-ching!

• Have used Twitter to keep in touch better with my local Austin American-Statesman reporters, who are now my very cool friends. Technology writer, Life & Arts writer are good pals I have met in person. I have been in the Statesman a whole bunch this year.

Image via Wikipedia

• “Important People” have followed me out of the blue recently, even though I did not yet follow them at the time. That can only mean good things.

• Have gotten closer with people in my industry whom I normally see only once a year at our conference.

Becky McCray profiles small business successes and failures at SmallBizSurvival.com.

Ed note: “Met” Lorie when I accidentally appropriated #CTT to play a Twitter game. (”Complete This Tweet: If my closet was a TV show, it would be __________________________ (mine? “What NOT to Wear”)) Ironic that I started the meme out of closet frustration. Great to stumble across this small business Twitter success story in such a typically Twitterly way.

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• Newspapers that Twitter

Image via CrunchBase

UPDATE: 9.25.2008 List updated to correspond with our research: Enterprise Microsharing Tools Compared.

My list (based on Jeremiah’s) of publicly known “Twitter-like” microsharing tools for internal deployment within companies. I’m keeping it spare to make it easier to update. See Jeremiah’s list of tools for more explanation and descriptions. *I also include four open source applications reported by John Eckman.

1. BlueTwit (IBM)
2. ESME (SAP/Siemens SDN)
3. *Jisko (AGPL)
4. Laconica (better known as Identi.ca)
5. OraTweet (Oracle)
6. Presently
7. Prologue (WordPress theme by Automattic)
8. SocialCast
9. Status
10. *Sweetter 2.0 (SUGUS)
11. Trillr
12. Twitter
13. *Twoorl
14. Yammer
15. *Yonkly
16. Iron Feed (no link yet)
17. unannounced (no link yet. see our report, TBD)

I’m aware of roughly 5 other similar, but unannounced, projects. Guessing these 20 are the tip of the iceberg.

Joint Contact looks pretty awesome, has microsharing features and integrates with Twitter. Cool enough that we may try it, but, not really what we consider an internal microsharing tool. What we love most is that it’s using Twitter to send notifications and accept remote updates. This in/out “command line” function is an important function that we predict for enterprise microsharing tools.

IDidWork offers microshared track completion along with evaluation and performance, and it’s short and sexy like microsharing, but a social network it is not, even in the “you and your team task feed” group version.

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

UPDATE 2: Adele McAlear just posted this great, thorough writeup of Yammer’s features, pros and cons.

UPDATE: TechCrunch’s own coverage of the winners has posted. Money quote: “There is such a huge demand for this type of service that 10,000 people and 2,000 organizations signed up for the service the first day it launched on Monday.” Go ahead take a peek, I bet people from YOUR large company are already on there.

Word on Twitter is that enterprise microsharing startup Yammer just won the top prize at Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis’s TechCrunch 50 startup conference and competition.

Yammer’s on-stage presentation at the event:

As Jeremiah Owyang blogged a few days ago, there’s already a list of internal microsharing tools coming to market. His remarks on Yammer:

Yammer
Simply detailed as: “What’s happening at your company? Share status updates with your co-workers.” recently reviewed by webware. Launched in Sept 08.

Congratulations Yammer. We (obviously) think you’re onto something, and sincerely wish you well.

CNET News/Webware’s review of Yammer

Steve Mulder’s “5 Marketing Tips for Tackling Twitter” is one of the best Twitter-for-business posts yet. Like Chris Lynch writing about 4 business uses of Twitter in CIO, he breaks it into a simplified framework of five core ways businesses can engage.

He calls them “Marketing Tips” but that sells the piece short. I especially love that he starts with LISTENING; a universally valuable use of Twitter whether your business ever publishes there. Skeptical? Search your brand or keyword here, now.

1. Listen and learn. My favorite — and he backs it up with four very salient “found tweets” about Epson, Hertz and Applebee’s, among others.
2. Publish valuable news and information. His list of 5 types of existing content that you can publish through Twitter is an okay start, a feed with only those things would almost be worse than nonw. Fortunately he emphasizes cultivating an ear for Twitter first, and shows how @JetBlue and @WholeFoods push beyond “existing content” to engage their readers.
3. Distribute promotions. He cites @DellOutlet, the poster child for this, but also cautions brands to remember that “they’re interested in you because they want to engage with the brand in some way.” Put some fun, value and excitement into the way you deliver promotions. @DellOutlet followers know there are limited numbers and limited time. It’s appealing to bargain hunters, and fun.
4. Create or extend your brand personality. I love that instead of just saying “@@HRBlock, @Crocsinc and @Zappos do this well,” he shows specific examples of HOW they do it.
5. Engage in conversations and customer service. This is his best writeup yet, and again he backs up his point with illustrations of following others back (@barackobama vs @hillaryclinton), providing genuine, human replies (@jetblue, @netsolcares) and proactively engaging on the platform.

In the last session at New Marketing Bootcamp yesterday, we did a case study on www.youcastr.com, which offers a live and recorded audio (and soon,) video broadcast and interaction platform for high school, youth and college sporting events.

They want to know where they can find more users and demonstrate how easy it is to produce your own content using their site.

We brainstormed a number of ideas as a panel (CC Chapman, Michelle Riggen-Rans, Adam Darowski, Aaron Strout and I), so the list is a bit “live-bloggy” but I thought it was worth sharing.

• Listen in on Twitter for keywords (for example) HS Sports, high school sports, HS football
• Use your Twitter account @youcastr to follow people who tweet about high school sports, and to offer useful, compelling content.
• Search YouTube and MySpace to identify who is uploading video already, and consider whether your tool can be interoperative with what they are already doing there.
• Have a great widget strategy so that individual producers can syndicate their own shows across multiple websites and platforms
• Reach out to those who are already producing audio and video school sports content, via youtube, Facebook & MySpace search, podcasting groups (and iTunes), cable companies to tap into those who are producing for community access TV, college radio stations,
• Focus the efforts above on areas where high school sports are big business or college sports are popular but not aired
• College alumni groups might be another interesting point of contact
• Partner with flip video camera producer or simple audio recorder companies to do promotions that show how easy it is to produce coverage
• Look for points of leverage, like statewide all-star games, etc. where there are players from many different districts and systems at once. Go in with those with inexpensive recorders and let people practice recording and covering the event.
• Run contests around mascots, producing good broadcasts, funny voiceovers for a semple “reel.”
• Make everything that youcastrs do really easy to pass along and share (”get this widget,” email to friends, etc.)
• Create simple, inviting ways, at the website and at promotional events, to encourage people to try their hand at doing a show.
• Highlight interesting personalities - like a 6 year old who does his own sportscast - that are using the service.

They’re revising their user interface to make the home page more accessible, and in the live session they captured these and a bunch of other useful ideas that I may have missed in my notes. Good luck to them going forward.

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

On a slight tangent, Happy Anniversary to Seesmic! Why include that here? Perhaps the best thing Seesmic does for web video is make it dead easy to try, and that’s the main challenge YouCastr faces. On Seesmic, you give your browser access to your webcam, hit a big red button in the middle of your nose, and you’re recording. It lowers the bar and encourages more people to experiment with the medium. You even can install a blog plugin to make it easy for readers to leave video comments on your website. People I have met and accessibility I’ve gained through Seesmic have both made a tremendous difference in my world this past year. If you haven’t tried it yet, I think you should.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch designer Erica Smith has released her second monthly analysis of the newspapers and newspaper journalists that Twitter. (Her July report is here.)

When Hurricane Gustav was heading toward New Orleans, the @gustavreporter (Chicago Tribune) and @trackinggustav (Statesman) were on top of it. With hurricane-specific accounts and reports from Louisiana. (Notice a trend? Those papers get it.) Statesman Internet editor Robert Quigley said @trackinggustav received 6,500+ page views directly related to his Twitter posts.

All of this re-affirms four things:
1. Newspapers can and should participate in social media.
2. Participating means not just throwing headlines at your readers, but following them and listening to what’s going on.
3. With Twitter, newspapers can make and break news just as quick — if not quicker — as the competition.
4. Twitter can drive traffic to your site.

Read the full post for her overview of Twitter’s increasing role in journalism. She tabulates an exhaustive list and analysis that covers

• which newspapers and journalists are Twittering
• relative follower gains and losses
• how the feed is being updated

The New York Times dominates the analysis, with 6 of the top 10 most followed newspaper Twitter streams, and 24 feeds overall, which is about twice as many as other top “Twittering” newspaper properties. (It should be no surprise to readers that our own Boston Globe has just 6 feeds, although that’s no bad considering their recent coverage of Twitter.)

Clive Thompson’s Brave New World of Digital Intimacy in tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine digs into phenomena at the core of microsharing. I’m quoted, but link to it for its objective value. As Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin writes “(he) really nailed a number of things I’ve been struggling to put into words for years.”

Some comments asked for more about “the value,” so I added this:

“What’s the value?”

It comes in many ways but they take time, engagement and even some serendipity to experience directly. I’ve lived it. I’ve seen it happen to many. One specific scenario:

In March 2007 I was a mom of two kids under two rebuilding my consultancy in a new city with no business network to speak of.

Today I wrapped up a business trip to NYC where I met with six c-level media and agency executives, two well-known journalists, my book agent and dozens of respected friends, contacts and colleagues. All of these contacts were made and cultivated via Twitter. Most logistical coordination for the trip was handled via Twitter. And yes, many of us combine the time-saving and reach-extending leverage of networking online with the substance of connecting in person.

While my experience is obviously not average, opportunities for connection, mentoring, personal and professional development, business, collaboration (and much, much more!) present themselves on Twitter and related platforms thousands and thousands of times over. Nonprofits, executives, national brands, [hobbyists,] those struggling through challenges or enlivened by their hobbies (I could go on, can you tell?) are coming together and making valuable connections in new ways we don’t fully understand yet.

We know it’s important [to] share ideas and to surround yourself with successful, inspiring people. We know that substantial business goes on at receptions, dinners and the golf course. We know that harnessing the power of loose ties leads to better opportunities and problem-solving.

Ironically, the contrived nature of this “ambient intimacy” powerfully mimics the natural human process of acquaintance. Dan Bricklin pointed out close parallels to The Little Prince chapter where the Fox asks to be tamed via non-confrontational, non-transactional presence. Proximity, time and repetition of this presence are what leads to connection, aka taming, aka… love.

We’re seeing genuine tribe-finding, sharing, strength and solidarity. We’re seeing ideas spread faster and further, real problems solved faster, genuine connections and introductions made with more ease, and a bubbling up of substantial news and cultural/market information from the sum total of expressions in the system.

Full disclosure: my personal and observed experiences of what these technologies make possible is so powerful that I now speak, consult and explain to others how to use them.

I encourage you to keep your mind open about what comes next. I thought Twitter was asinine too. Many did. But many feel strongly about the value of what we’re learning there.

— Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton, Boston, MA