Twitter builds team to focus on revenue generation

Twitter's website says it is looking "for new members of our technical staff to work on cutting edge monetization projects".

Four jobs have been advertised on Twitter's website directly relating to generating cash, including product marketing manager for monetization as well as three software and systems engineering roles. Several other business development jobs advertised also have revenue generating responsibilities attached to them.

To date Twitter has spent more money than it has generated as it has built up its business to attract more than 40 million users from just a few million a year earlier.

Twitter founder Biz Stone said last year that his company was planning to launch paid-for commercial accounts with additional services for corporate users. He also cited licensing and syndication as areas it would be looking at. In October Twitter struck deals with Google and Microsoft, which were reported to be worth US$15m and US$10m, licensing them its data feed to use in their real-time search results.

Another area that could lead to cash generating possibilities is that of media partnerships.

Media organisations have been some of the biggest adopters of Twitter with accounts such as @cnnbrk and @breakingnews attracting in excess of 2.8 million and 1.5 million followers respectively.

Some of these are reported to be looking at the idea of paid tweets offered by the likes of Los Angeles start-up Ad.ly.

US celebrity, model and reality TV star Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian), who has more than 2.7 million followers, has signed up with Ad.ly and is reported to be paid $10,000 for every commercial tweet.