Bloggers and reporters alike worked themselves into a froth yesterday over speculation around Twitter’s plans to charge brands for commercial use of its service, prompted by Fiona Ramsay’s story in Marketing magazine and a considered piece in New York Magazine earlier this week. Twitter’s Biz Stone captures the essence of the activity:

Most of the follow-up to Ramsay’s piece quote Bob Pearson, VP of communities and conversations at Dell, which famously has experienced significant boost in sales enabled through Twitter, saying:

“If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere.”

No doubt that’s what prompted Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to clarify:

“It’s great that both individuals and organizations are finding value in Twitter and there may be ways we can enrich the experience. In fact, we hope to begin iterating on revenue products this year.

However, it’s important to note that whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone—individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services. We are still very early in the idea stage and we don’t have anything to share just yet despite a recent surge in speculation. When we do, we’ll be sure to let you know.”

MG Siegler at VentureBeat tracks the origin of the rumours:

“This idea of charging for corporate accounts has been around since at least October, when CNET reported hearing whispers of it. Since then, we’ve heard the exact same thing from a few other sources. In November, Williams started to float that idea out there publicly. But now, with talk about the plan picking up, I think it’s a safe bet that it’s coming sooner rather than later.”

Elsewhere on the web:

Writing for The Guardian, Cory Doctorow picks apart the Digital Britain report, counting the ways in which Lord Carter should get real about securing Britain’s digital future.

Jake Hird at Econsultancy analyses the merits of Slow Blogging and looks at how microblogging is evolving the blog landscape.

Robin Grant at We Are Social posts a couple of graphs charting Twitter’s astounding growth in the UK (trebled in one month) and ponders on the implications for social PR when Twitter goes mainstream.