Yesterday, Guy Kawasaki posted a poll on SocialSurvey asking the question, “How much would you pay to use Twitter?”. The poll was reported on early in the day by TechCrunch and at that time more than 50% of all respondents stated they would pay at least $5 monthly. At the time of this posting, however, the numbers have shifted greatly and the majority now say they would rather see it go away than pay.

Thanks to TechCrunch for commanding your readers to skew the results because that is really awesome…

As for my vote, yes I would pay to use Twitter. I’m not really sure what that price would be, however, the service has been of great value to me personally and professionally. Yes, I understand that the value of Twitter is really access to a community and that such a plan could drive that community to another platform, but what needs to be considered is how much you have already spent on Twitter.

As you probably know from reading our blog and a number of other blogs, applications and businesses have been built completely around Twitter. There is a large investment here and one that may not be easily transferred over to the next platform. Those who have made this investment will have some stake in moving and I am sure would gladly pay more to stay. There are also many who have purchased these applications or services. I alone have spent some pocket change to purchase iPhone apps such as Tweetsville and Summizer. If I am willing to purchase an application to use Twitter why wouldn’t I pay for it?

If Twitter would roll out a pay for use model I would seriously consider it. I love its simplicity, its flexibility and the community that uses it. I am not sure what the magic dollar amount is (unless Twitter is hiring a business director and in that case give me a call), however I do know Twitter is worth something.

If you haven’t done it yet check out Guy’s poll and cast your vote. If you are sitting on the fence or would rather see it go than pay, what is Twitter missing and what does it need to implement before rolling out the pay for use model?

TwittAd (@twittad), the service that helps you sell your Twitter profile background to advertisers and evaluate what your tweets are worth, launched two new features on their website yesterday. The first feature is an affiliate referral program, available for both users and advertisers, that allows the referrer to get paid when their referrals’ backgrounds are sold on TwittAd. The second feature is the implementation of a one-tweet promo message, tweeted on behalf of users whose backgrounds are purchased.

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From when TwittAd first launched, and still today, it allowed for its users to set the price and duration for ads to run as the background of a Twitter profile. In doing so, it was banking on its users to have an idea of what their tweets were worth. My first assumption was the rates were going to look like a shotgun spread but eventually flatten as companies and Twitter-ers experimented with rates and attempted to measure ROI.

For those not as bold to make up a price, the makers of TwittAd have created whatsyourtweetworth.com. This web service provides the approximate value of any user’s tweets by simply entering a username into the site. And because the site does not require users to authenticate the service can work both ways. On one side users can get an approximation of their worth and on the other companies using TwittAd can validate they are getting a fair price.

While the site doesn’t provide any insights on how this valuation is calculated it does pull the user’s followers, following and total updates count. And based on visiting the site as my counts have changed, my tweet worth per month has changed a few cents here and there.

With multiple links and notes to TwittAd it is obvious this site was launched to increase and encourage users to sell their backgrounds. What is still yet to be seen is how the community accepts this service and agrees with its valuation. Regardless, this space is fairly unexplored and if you were looking to turn a buck on your tweets this site seems to be one of the first experimenting with the calculation.

Yammer, an enterprise microblogging platform mirrored after Twitter, launched at TechCrunch50 this year and grabbed the attention of everyone.

Yammer was developed by a genealogy site called Geni that was looking for a way to improve internal communications. David Sacks, founder of Geni, liked the finished concept so much he decided it would be worthwhile to spin off as its own company, offering it to other enterprises as well.

The purpose is to allow co-workers to share status updates. You post updates on what you are working on. You can post news, links, ask questions, and get answers for people in your company.

You can see most the most prolific people and the most followed people. It is a good way to discover who is the most influential in your company.

To start using Yammer in your company is very easy. Anyone with a company email address can start the Yammer network and begin inviting coworkers. Each network remains private by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. Yammer also states that information is never shared with third parties.

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TwittAd (@twittad) is a new service created by James Eliason (@jameseliason) that allows advertisers to pay Twitter users to promote a product, website or virtually anything else through an ad uploaded to their profile background.

There has been much speculation about when this type of monetization would happen. The ability has always been present for users to upload their own backgrounds, but the discussion was fueled even more by the Mashable post describing how to set up a custom Twitter background.

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