Bloomberg News: Twitter Inc. plans to generate its first revenue in 2009 from companies such as Dell Inc., Whole Foods Market Inc. and Starbucks Corp., which use the site to communicate with customers.
The San Francisco-based service could make money by verifying Twitter accounts, said co-founder Biz Stone, so users "following" brands would know it was really Whole Foods or Coca-Cola Co. sending Tweets. Twitter also could offer statistics to businesses detailing how effective their Tweets are and offer multiple accounts to large businesses with many branches, he said.
Twitter had an estimated 18 million users in May and has grown into the third-largest social-networking site, according to research firm ComScore Inc.
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