• San Francisco Chronicle , Monday, February 2, 2009 11:45 AM

Twitter's revenue-generating model is likely coming in April, Twitter founder and CEO Evan Williams reveals in a San Francisco Chronicle report. "We don't like to make too big a deal of it," he said. "We don't want to rush it." The Chronicle points out that Twitter's leaders frequently face the question of money at conferences and from users. Williams and others often reply that startups take at least two years to get their business model together. Twitter was developed in 2006.

Twitter has 24 employees housed in a loft-like office in San Francisco's South of Market area. The company may be small in staff, but its impact in reporting events like the US Airways emergency landing in the Hudson or the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, has been huge. According to Nielsen Online, nearly 2.7 million unique users visited Twitter's Web site in December, a sevenfold increase from a year earlier.

Increasingly, celebrities and corporations keep in touch with fans and customers through their Twitter accounts. As the Chronicle reports, "advertising is among the most obvious sources of revenue for Twitter, although it risks alienating users by bombarding them with sales pitches." Ad execs are all too familiar with that danger. "It would have to be well done because it's such a personal medium," says Liz Ross, president of North American operations for Tribal DDB advertising agency.

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