23 September 2009 | Author: O. Gaywood Media Optimiser

Twitter investor hints at mobile use to fund site

Joi Ito, an investor in microblogging site Twitter, has hinted that he sees the future of the site's profitability in charging for mobile use.

This has been added to by co-founder Biz Stone's announcement that Twitter will not start using ads this year and that immediate goals were to improve the search function and create a paid-for commercial account.

Twitter has amassed tens of millions of users which Ito sees as the most important step in financing the site as it has a platform of loyal users.

Ito said: "When Twitter grows, SMS usage goes up. Sites are now able to promote across friends' networks; traffic to certain kinds of sites increases. There's a lot of things Twitter enables and as a normal internet company would do, we'd look at who's benefiting the most in this value chain, and where is there the least friction [for Twitter] to get paid."

Asked to comment on the rumour that Twitter was approaching a deal with a large mobile networks, he answered cautiously: "Yes, there is that rumour. I can't really say if it's true. I can't speak on behalf of Twitter. It's possible" before adding that no money-making method was definite:

"If you have a clear value, you may experiment and find out that one way of collecting money is going to work better than another. If you have the users and the traffic, you can experiment and iterate and usually figure out a way to make some money."