• Reuters, Tuesday, May 19, 2009 11:30 AM

Twitter is hard at work on figuring out ways to make money from its fast-growing microblogging service, but advertising, apparently, is not one of them. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on Monday said one revenue stream the company is pursuing is developing add-on tools and services -- such as "lightweight analytics" -- for professional users of the site, which will be introduced by the end of the year.

But he dismissed the idea of selling advertising: "There are a few reasons why we're not pursuing advertising -- one is it's just not quite as interesting to us," Stone told a Reuters technology conference. He said that ads could annoy users, and that the company had no plans to hire and advertising sales staff. "There are no people at Twitter who know anything about advertising or work in advertising. So we don't have anyone there to make or take those calls,"

Twitter's growth this year has been explosive. The company, which allows people to send 140-character messages, or tweets, saw its unique visitors shoot up 83% in April from the previous month, to 17 million users, according to comScore. Stone said the company plans to double its staff of 40 by the end of the year.

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