MWC: Twitter Talks Up Mobile Success

Twitter on Tuesday revealed that 40 percent of tweets now come from mobile platforms, with the company saying it is pushing for “deeper integration” into smartphone platforms.

At a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo said the service is growing at a “ridiculous rate”, hitting a record of 6,000 tweets per second in Japan at New Year’s Eve.

Growth

He said Twitter now regularly carries 130 million tweets per day and during events such as the Super Bowl can hit peaks of 4,000 tweets per second. That compares with 27 tweets per second during last year’s game, he said.

Costolo said Twitter is looking for better integration into smartphone platforms, as well as improvements to how it can be used on more basic phones.

“It has to just work the same way everywhere it is used,” Costolo said. “We want to be able to tweet from any app, without having to fire up another application.”

He said the service “already making money”, but did not immediately clarify whether he was referring to profits or revenues. Currently Twitter makes its revenues from promoted trends, sponsored tweets and promoted tweets, Costolo said.

He dismissed recent reports of acquisition talks by Google, Facebook and others as mere “rumour”.

Google and Facebook, whose rivalry has grown more intense as the social network has lured eyeballs from the search giant, have reportedly broached the notion of acquiring Twitter for $8 billion to $10bn (£5bn to £6.2bn), according to The Wall Street Journal.

Ad business

Twitter has 200 million users and earned $45m (£28m) in 2010, mostly from its recently launched ad business. According to eMarketer, the company is on course to make $150m in advertising, or triple its 2010 earnings, in 2011.

The ad revenue could be greater if Twitter continues to successfully drive its Promoted products suite and launches its self-serve platform en masse this year.

Launched last April, Promoted Tweets allows companies to pay for tweets hawking their products on a CPM (cost per mille) basis, or per thousand people who see their tweets.

Promoted Trends features a company or product name in the trending topics on Twitter. The newest ad offering is Promoted Accounts, which are suggested based on a user’s public list of whom they follow. All these products have proven their worth.