We have confirmed with Twitter that beta testing of its new business features, dubbed the “Twitter Business Center,” has begun.

According to the company, “only a handful of accounts have these features presently,” but it will expand on a gradual basis to more accounts. One of the biggest additions: the ability for businesses to accept Twittter direct messages, even from people they don’t follow.

Here is an overview of some of the new features that businesses can expect to enjoy in the near future:

Starting Up with Twitter Business Center

A small group of business users are getting emails from the Twitter team, inviting them to test “the Twitter Toolkit.” This is how the invite email begins:

“Congrats!

Your account has been invited to participate in testing one of Twitter’s newest business-centric features, the Twitter Toolkit. We’ll be rolling it out to you within the next few days (if you don’t have it already) for your business or organization’s Twitter account. To get started, visit your business’ Twitter account settings…

http://twitter.com/settings/account

…and look for the “Business” tab. From there you’ll be directed to fill out some information which will help us verify your business or organization.”

Once businesses click the link, they have to activate the business features for their accounts. It then takes them to a page where they fill in information such as business contact info and whether they are a small business, large company, or an individual/group.

Digging into the Features

Once a business activates its account, it is automatically verified. This is important because Twitter Verified Accounts have been limited to individuals thus far. It seems like Twitter has finally decided to expand the Verified Accounts program to brands and organizations.

After activation, four tabs appear: Overview, Business Info, Verification, and Contributors. Overview provides basic information about business accounts and Business Info allows a company to change the information that it submitted during initial registration. The Contributors tab, which we revealed several months ago, gives businesses the ability to add multiple users to a business account so that they can tweet on its behalf.

Twitter has a new feature for businesses: the ability to accept direct messages from any of their followers, regardless of whether they follow that person or not. This is huge for businesses that perform customer service via Twitter: they can get feedback and deal with private customer issues without having to follow the person back first.

Get the full article (including screenshots) from Mashable