@briggsb, author of the BBspot article

While people were laughing, first about themselves, later about others still believing the fake, I offered three and later five beta invites for “twitter premium accounts” with a reference to @ev, twitters Evan Williams.

“5 twitter premium accounts beta invites left, thanks to @ev, DM me”

Within 10 minutes, 21 people sent me direct messages, asking for an invite for the premium accounts. I won’t publish names here, because 10 min. earlier I was one of those wondering if I should believe the story or not (I’m not nerd enough to know the BBspot, sorry…) – to keep it short: you would certainly agree that all of those messaging me about an invite are smart people. Nine of them are native English speakers. And I guess the reference to @ev convinced them. Kudos to the author, Brian Briggs, you got most of them ;-)

Apart from the fake news BBSpot “unveiled”, it’s no news that Twitter is in urgent need of a business model, check Google. It wouldn’t surprise me, if Twitter would introduce a similar premium accounts model. Twitter is known for their small step-by-step enhancements, listening to their users and their needs (in a reasonable way). Sure, 21 people asking me for an invite are not representative, but it might be considered as a tendency, that people want more than 140 characters – at least sometimes.

Continue the story yourself, think about power users, spending hour after hour to add other twitter users, twitter itself, investors… – and Facebook ;-)