Twitter lets others display its tweets
SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter Inc., the website whose users post about 50 million short messages a day, will offer a feature that lets other sites display its content.
The New York Times Co. (the parent of The Boston Globe), Amazon.com, and eBay will show Twitter updates, or tweets, on their sites, chief executive Evan Williams said yesterday at a conference in Austin, Texas.
Initially, 13 sites will adapt the service, he said.
“It’s only scratching the surface,’’ Williams said. “These big partners aren’t the only ones we want to limit it to.’’
Twitter, which has already signed licensing deals with Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Yahoo Inc., is looking for more sources of revenue.
This month, it gave real-time search engines, including Collecta and Scoopler, more access to its software code.
That lets the sites come up with new ways to distribute comments that Twitter users post about their lives and consumption habits.
The feature announced yesterday would, for example, allow a Huffington Post reader to see the tweets of brands and people mentioned in the stories.
People will also be able to log in to certain sites using Twitter accounts, Williams said.
Twitter lets users post updates of up to 140 characters.
The closely held company, founded in 2006, began focusing on revenue just last year.
The deals with Microsoft and Google, allowing their search engines to display tweets, generated about $25 million for Twitter, sources said in December. That was enough to make the San Francisco company profitable in 2009, they said.
