• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, October 7, 2011

Twitter chose Advertising Week as the proper timing to open its previously announced office in New York. At a ceremony yesterday, Twitter creator and chairman Jack Dorsey was joined by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to formally open the office, which is on Madison Avenue.

 

Hoping to grab some of the big brand budgets that flow through Manhattan, Dorsey said the initial staff in New York will be sales-related, but that more engineers will be part of the mix. There will be 40 employees initially at this office.

Twitter hopes to be part of the growing tech community in the New York City area. As reported locally by NBCNewYork.com , Dorsey also said that New York is also home to more Twitter users than any other city in the world.

BetaBeat reports Dorsey saying that "Half a billion dollars have been invested into the Twitter ecosystem in the past year. As big brands look for better tools to harness the power of Twitter, we hope this ecosystem can help address this need." 

Twitter ad revenue should reach $139.5 million, estimates eMarketer and up from $45 million in 2010. The company began rolling out its "promoted tweets" model in recent weeks, which puts sponsor messages into search results.

No doubt Twitter will get a boost in users and perhaps in marketing tie-ins as Apple iPhone owners start upgrading to the iOS 5 version of the mobile operating system. Twitter is deeply integrated with the OS so users now can more easily tweet their status and links, as well as images and videos they take with their phones.