Twitter to unveil advertising plan

Twitter users will see ads on the site for the first time, as the microblogging service unveils its long-awaited plan to transform itself into a profitable business, says a media report.

The four-year-old company would announce on Tuesday a new service called 'Promoted Tweets', which would allow businesses to buy keywords, The Times reported.

"Tweets" written by the company would then appear at the top of the page when a user has searched for that word, much like on Google, it added.

Further, the report said that the adverts, which would be limited to 140 characters like all messages on the site, would only show up in search results.

This means users who do not search for something would not see them in their regular Twitter streams.

Over time, they may appear in the stream of posts users see when they log on. According to the publication, Twitter would reveal the first adverts to around ten per cent of users.

They would include 'tweets' from companies such as Starbucks, Virgin America and Best Buy, the electronics retailer.

Although Twitter was recently valued at $1 billion and has around 45 million regular users, it made almost no revenue until it began selling real-time search results to Google in December.