In our effort to be perfectly transparent with our entire user community, Jeff and I wanted to share information about some important changes that will be coming to Twitalyzer around the first of the year.  Specifically, in the context of Twitter’s recent announcement to start offering some type of analytics solution, we have decided to redouble our efforts and invest heavily in Twitalyzer’s growth as the most robust, most useful, and most well supported platform for measurement and analytics for Twitter.

Twitalyzer is really just two guys, Jeff Katz and Eric Peterson, both of whom have spent a fair amount of time working in the digital measurement space.  For the past two years we have spent our evenings, weekends, and free moments devising new ways to help businesses & organizations understand and optimize their efforts in short-message media (e.g., Twitter.)  With our 3.0 release earlier this year, we made the jump from “free” to “freemium” and added hundreds of paying customers, a number that we are proud to say continues to increase every week. 

With paying customers we believe ourselves obligated to provide the best possible service and support.  This commitment is already manifest in a variety of ways:

  • Rapid response to customer issues via Twitter and email
  • Rapid evolution to the platform, including the addition of specific functionality that customers request
  • The addition of documentation and support materials to ensure that everyone gets the most out of Twitalyzer
  • The recent creation of our GetSatisfaction site to ensure that all our users have the ability to engage us directly

We think we are doing pretty good, but we want to be doing more than pretty good, we want to be awesome. To this end, starting in early January, Twitalyzer is going to make the shift from a largely free solution to a largely paid solution.

Some of our more popular reports — user profile, metrics, and reach — will continue to be freely available to everyone, and we are committed to improving those reports and ensuring that every user can still benefit from the system, regardless of their ability to pay.  But as of early January 2011 the vast majority of reports provided in Twitalyzer will only be available to paying customers.

By making this change, we will be able accelerate our awesomeness and do things like:

  • Hire awesome support staff to ensure that all customers get the most from Twitalyzer
  • Hire awesome programmers to improve system stability and performance
  • Hire awesome designers to improve our user interface and reports
  • Hire awesome marketers to help spread our message

Our goal from the beginning was to become the most widely used and widely valued real-time measurement platform for Twitter in the world.  We are 100% committed to Twitalyzer’s long-term success, and we hope you will support us in that commitment.

In order to make the transition as painless as possible we are going to do three things:

  • Lower the cost of our least expensive option from $9.99 per month to $4.99 per month for a single account tracked;
  • Lower the cost of our most expensive option from $199.99 per month to $99.99 per month for up to 100 accounts tracked;
  • Introduce new payment options including annual invoices to ensure that everyone who wants Twitalyzer will have access to Twitalyzer.

Even better, we are rolling out our new pricing today so that everyone can benefit from lower monthly costs.

We understand that this decision will not be popular with some of our users, but we do hope all of you understand why we are making the decision.  We hope that by starting this conversation about this change now we will have an opportunity to discuss the ramifications and resolve any individual challenges well ahead of the change in early January.  We also hope that if you have any concerns whatsoever about this change that you will reach out to us directly to discuss those concerns and give us a chance to demonstrate our commitment to our customers, this product, and your success.

Both Jeff and I have been repeatedly humbled by your support, and for that we thank you all. 

Sincerely,

Eric Peterson
CEO and Founder
Twitalyzer, LLC.