Twitter plans new products and tighter security

Twitter has announced plans to hire 27 professionals to create new products and improve the security of the site.

The increase in headcount is a significant move for the relatively small company, which currently has around 120 staff.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone stated in November that 2010 will be the "revenue year" for the company, and the variety of job postings currently hosted on the micro-blogging site suggests that he is not digressing from this strategy.

"Twitter is looking for new members of our technical staff to work on cutting edge monetisation projects. You will work in small teams, own the projects that you work on, and will have direct input into the business decisions of the company," reads one of the job descriptions.

The new members of staff will "proactively look for ways to make the user and customer experiences better", the description adds.

The new employees will focus on creating Twitter front-end features, and should have experience in advertising applications in line with firm's new advertising strategy scheduled to be rolled out this year.

Twitter is also issuing calls for a professional who will maintain a platform to help developers in media companies create new integrations with Twitter, as well as for another employee who will encourage media professionals to use the tools.

The other job descriptions display Twitter's plans to increase the support tools available to users, further develop its application programming interface, develop Twitter's international front-end and add new search capabilities.

A product marketing manager is also wanted to enhance business users' understanding of the value of Twitter. According to the description, the work can range from creating "better packaging [of] existing features for businesses, managing all outbound marketing for new monetisation products, [and] analysing customer needs for improved product development".

Finally, Twitter wants to increase its security team after a number of safety issues hit the headlines last year. The most recent incident involved hackers logging in to Twitter and redirecting users to a site hosted by a group calling itself the 'Iranian Cyber Army'.

A network and infrastructure security manager will audit and secure systems and create procedures that respond to security issues. The job will involve designing a system that will prevent network intrusions. Meanwhile, an anti-spam software engineer will focus on Twitter's spam detection system.

Twitter secured funding of $50m (£30m) from Insight Venture Partners in September last year that will back the new staffing spree.

Stone has said that Twitter will have to consider an initial public offering to gain the capital to expand if the site does not bring in enough profit in 2010.