Social media website Twitter unveils advertising program

Social media website Twitter unveils advertising program

Twitter, founded in 2006, is now telling users that it will implement its first advertising service on the website, the company announced recently.

The product is called Promoted Tweets. It will highlight sponsored messages from advertisers when users search the Twitter network.

The New York Times says the program, which is comparable to Google's AdWords, is the answer to the long-lasting question of how the company expects to turn its widespread use into revenue.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says on his blog that the advertising platform offers useful information for consumers and that it will strive to only present ad content that is relevant to the website's users.

"It's non-traditional, it's easy, and it makes a ton of sense for Twitter", says Stone. "We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We'll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don't resonate".

Twitter hosts 50 million new tweets per day, the website says, or an average of 600 tweets per second. The social network has 85 million members, according to Computerworld.