CoTweet, the easy-to-use and fantastically handy social media tool that lets many individuals to collaborate on publishing content on Twitter, is going the way of the Dodo in a few weeks.

Image via CrunchBase

ExactTarget, the company behind the tool, announced on its blog this week that CoTweet is being rolled into a new enterprise package called SocialEngage.   CoTweet will cease to be and SocialEngage will not offer a free service.

The company had not published any pricing information for SocialEngage; it invites users to contact ExactTarget for more information.

The company says: “We want to express our sincere thanks to those who have helped us evolve CoTweet into the leading social media management solution. By bringing to a close our free product, we’ll expand our ability to focus on bringing you new innovations and cutting-edge products and features.”

Commenters on the blog are not at all happy.  ExactTarget is being flamed on its own site for lack or pricing transparancy and commenters are trading information about free and low-cost alternatives to CoTweet.

It will be interesting to watch this play out. Will people be prepared to pay enterprise-type fees for enterprise social media software?  How can ExactTarget hope to compete against a raft of very high quality free, or very low cost competitors like TweetDeck and HootSuite?

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