Twitter have just announced that the micro-blogging site have passed the 100 million active user mark, but still has no plans to become a public company.
Dick Costolo, CEO, said that he wanted the company to remain independent, as Twitter plans on increasing its business range by increasing where adverts appear on the site. He went on to say that active users, who log-on to the site at least once a month, has increased by 82% this year, while half of the active 100 million users log-on at least once a day.
Although Twitter have no plans butting the company on the stock market, the company has managed to secure another $400m (£250m) in venture captial funding this summer.
Mr Costolo also went on to say that: “We want to be able to remain independent, grow the business the way we want to, and not be beholden to public markets until we feel like we want to be”.
Although it’s Twitter’s plan to start showing adverts on the site (something that the site started to do in certain areas of its service in 2010), there is still concern that commercialisation can sometimes alientate users of social media sites – something that Twitter certainly does not want to do. So the plan is to show promoted tweets, for example from a coffee chain, although users would only see that tweet if they followed that particular company.
Mr Costolo belives that the business can work and be successful solely on advertising income, he said: “It’s our firm belief that our advertising platform is the only revenue component that we need to have in the market in order to become a huge independent business”.
Let us know your thoughts on this by tweeting us @Gadget_Helpline, or drop us a comment below.