Twitter will launch a free analytics dashboard for customers by the end of this year. The news was revealed by a Twitter representative at the Sports Marketing Summit this week.
This feature could greatly benefit businesses and average users alike who are interested in understanding the effect their tweets have on others.
The team that works on this tool is the one behind Trendly, an analytics company, which Twitter acquired in June. According to the announcement, Twitter’s analytics solution will show you which tweets are spreading and which users are most influential in your network.
While the product will be free at launch, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Twitter develop a premium version they can charge for in the future. As Twitter searches for its business model, this may be one more piece of the puzzle to generating non-traditional advertising revenue.
This announcement will undoubtedly have major impact on companies which previously dominated the Twitter analytics field. Klout, Omniture and Twitalyzer have all developed products that took advantage of the fact that Twitter focused single-mindedly on its core service — sending and receiving tweets. These companies will now have to try twice as hard to reach customers and differentiate their offerings to sweeten the pot.
