Twitter rules out ads – for now

Twitter has ruled out the use of advertisements on its micro-blogging site to generate revenue, the company said yesterday at the beginning of its two-day conference in Los Angeles, California.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in his keynote that the company’s immediate focus was to continue to innovate and build new features and revenue-generating products.

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

Twitter recently launched a product in beta called Account Verification, which validates accounts belonging to businesses so users know they have found the correct tweet stream.

In his keynote, Stone confirmed that the company planned to launch paid-for commercial accounts that will feature extra search capabilities and analytics tools.

Twitter was valued at US$1bn ($1.15bn) last week, followig a new round of funding worth US$50m. The company is said to have about US$30m in cash.

Twitter’s API lead Alex Payne also spoke at the event. He discussed the planned changes in version 2 of Twitter's API and how users can adjust their applications accordingly.

Payne also gave a presentation on Twitter’s history and how the site has grown since its launch in 2006.

Payne picked out Tweetie, Tweetdeck and CoTweet, as some of the most successful Twitter applications.

He picked out Tweetie because it provides a client for the increasingly popular iPhone, Tweetdeck because it allows PRs and the media to stay on top of events and track brands, and CoTweet because it provides a good brand management application for businesses using Twitter.