Twitter's Stone says no ads in 2009
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Twitter has no plans to put advertisements on the popular microblogging site this year, co-founder Biz Stone said on Tuesday, amid a growing push for the 2-year-old Internet sensation to begin making money.
Stone, who said Twitter was "pretty good right now" with regards to funding, stressed the company's immediate focus was on building out features ranging from an improved search functions to paid-for commercial accounts.
"Any kind of approach toward advertising is going to be awhile ... We're not thinking about that just yet," Stone said at the 140: Twitter Conference in Los Angeles.
Privately held Twitter -- known for its 140-character, stream-of-consciousness blogs -- has received plenty of venture funding, but Stone declined to disclose the amounts or valuation.
TechCrunch recently reported that a new round of funding would value Twitter at $1 billion.
Still in its infancy, the fledgling company has rapidly become a cultural phenomenon, but Twitter and other social networking Web sites have yet to show investors how they will start earning a profit.
To that end, Stone said Twitter aims to offer premium features for commercial account users this year.
"We wanted to show people that we're here to stay and here we are making money," Stone said.
Those features, which could debut in test form, are envisioned as for-pay features and potentially could include "light analytics" tools that allow commercial users to gather data on their followers, he said.
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein, editing by Maureen Bavdek)
