• Mashable et al., Tuesday, May 11, 2010 12:37 PM

Twitter has confirmed the soft-launch of a "Business Center," which consists of various features, including the ability for businesses to accept direct messages on the service -- even from people they don't technically "follow."

"This is huge for businesses that perform customer service via Twitter," notes Mashable. "They can get feedback and deal with private customer issues without having to follow the person back first."

"The Business Center Toolkit will let companies using the micro-blogging site for marketing purposes turn on and off different options and functionality," Venture Beat writes.

"This is Twitter's move to offer specific business services that will enhance Twitter's abilities to serve the business community," notes Marketing Pilgrim. "Eventually this will be another one of those things that will maybe even help Twitter, ummmmm, make money ... How about that?"

Presently, only a small group of business users have received emails from the Twitter team, inviting them to test a so-called "Twitter Toolkit," according to Mashable.

According to Twitter: "Only a handful of accounts have these features presently," while it expects to roll out the features gradually. Twitter is asking participating businesses to "fill out some information which will help us verify your business or organization."

Once a business activates its account, it is automatically verified, which leads Mashable to believe that Twitter has finally decided to expand its Verified Accounts program to brands and organizations.

"Business accounts can also add multiple users so different employees can use the same account," notes Fast Company, adding: "The biggest change is in direct messaging ... Normally, direct messages can only be sent and received by two accounts that are following each other, in order to cut down on spam ... But business accounts allow the receiving of messages from users that account is not following -- this could be useful for customer service, since a business wouldn't have to mess around following every single user who also likes Peet's Coffee or whatever."

Read the whole story at Mashable et al. »