Twitter boss rules out ads

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 19 May 2009 at 08:37

Twitter's chief executive Biz Stone has ruled out serving adverts to users as a way of making money from the microblogging service.

Speaking at the Global Technology Summit in New York, Stone dismissed the notion of selling advertisements on the popular service, even though ad revenue is the main way most web start-ups manage to stay in business while keeping their service free for consumers.

"There are a few reasons why we're not pursuing advertising - one is it's just not quite as interesting to us," says Stone. "There are no people at Twitter who know anything about advertising or work in advertising. So we don't have anyone there to make or take those calls."

Stone says the company is focusing on developing various add-on tools and services for business users of Twitter, including a "lightweight analytics" system and directory of commercial accounts that would verify that businesses on Twitter are legitimate.

He says Twitter plans to introduce some of these tools by year end.

Visitors to Twitter jumped 83% in April from the previous month, to reach 17 million, according to comScore data. Stone admits, however, that such rapid expansion can't last.

"We were joking in the office that if this growth rate continues week over week, we'll run out of people on planet Earth to sign up to Twitter by the end of the year," he says.

The company turned down a $500 million acquisition offer from Facebook last year, and sources suggest Google has also held talks with Twitter about a potential deal.