Twitter may charge for new services

2009-11-20 11:39:21 GMT2009-11-20 19:39:21 (Beijing Time) Xinhua English

BEIJING, Nov. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Biz Stone, the co-founder of the social networking site Twitter, has said he may offer commercial services later this year.

Speaking to the BBC, Stone said while the service would remain free to both business and personal users, he expects to make money by charging for extra data such as analytics information. Such data would help companies to better aim their tweets at their followers. Already Google provides similar data to website owners for free.

Despite becoming increasingly popular, Twitter has been unable to find a way to make money. Earlier this year it secured 100 million U.S. dollars in funding and the company is currently valued at 1 billion dollars.

A memo leaked from the company earlier this year suggested that the firm wanted to reach a billion users by 2013, though Twitter is yet to make a profit from its current user base.

(Agencies)

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