Stone: No ads for Twitter in 2009

There will be no advertisements placed on microblogging website Twitter this year, according to Biz Stone, co-founder of the portal.

Wednesday, 23 September 2009


Commenting at the 140: Twitter Conference in Los Angeles, Stone suggested there are other priorities for the company at present.

"Any kind of approach toward advertising is going to be a while," he explained. "We're not thinking about that just yet."

Some of the developments currently under consideration include paid-for commercial accounts, as well as improved search functions.

The former is set to be launched before the end of the year and - according to Stone - could involve "light analytics" tools which will allow commercial users to collect various forms of data on the people who follow them.

Twitter recently ranked highly in digital analyst firm comScore's Media Metrix of the top US web properties in July.

While Google and Yahoo! sites led the way with nearly 158 million and 156.5 million monthly visitors respectively, Stone's microblogging portal moved up to 42nd in the list with 20.1 million visitors.

Social networking site Facebook was the fifth most popular site of the month.

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• Eight in ten use Twitter for business

• Twitter guidelines for brands

• Ex-Google exec becomes Twitter COO

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