Twitter Not Planning To Show Ads

The growth of Twitter over the last year has been phenomenal. Yet like so many web services it still faces the basic problem of finding an income stream.

Accepting advertising in some form would have been the obvious way to monetise the service and the recent appearance of internal text ads led many of us to speculate this was coming. However in an interview with Reuters Twitter co-founder “Biz” Stone has poured cold water on that idea.

According to Stone, Twitter has neither the inclination nor the expertise to sell advertising space. Instead they plan to launch extra services for premium commercial users such as lightweight analytics and a verified business directory. Another option is revenue sharing with cellphone carriers when users access Twitter through SMS. Either way, Stone said, basic access will continue to be free.

If they can make this work I feel it’s a good thing. The advertising model would have been difficult; an increasing number of people are accessing Twitter via third party apps. That would mean any advertising would need to be inserted in the tweet stream to ensure visibility, a move that would have met with massive user resistance.