Twitter’s business model has been officially confirmed by co-founder Biz Stone, which has said that Twitter is developing add-on tools and services for businesses and professional users of Twitter. These premium tools will be introduced by the end of 2009.

But Stone dismissed the notion of selling advertisements on the popular service at this time, even though ad revenue is the main way most Web start-ups manage to stay in business while keeping their service free for consumers.

“There are a few reasons why we’re not pursuing advertising — one is it’s just not quite as interesting to us,” Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York via videolink from San Francisco.

Stone said serving up ads alongside Twitter messages could also annoy users. And he said Twitter doesn’t have, and isn’t seeking to hire, the staff to create an advertising-based business.

He also confirmed that Twitter will continue to remain free for all users and businesses and talked about Twitter’s plan to work with mobile networks:

The company’s main focus at the moment is developing new features for commercial users, such as “lightweight analytics” and a directory of commercial accounts that would verify that businesses on Twitter are legitimate.

He also said the company has had talks with cell phone carriers to make sure that Twitter works on their text messaging networks, and said it was possible Twitter could strike revenue-sharing agreements with some of the carriers. Twitter closed a round of financing earlier this year pegged at $35 million by media reports, and Stone said the company was not under any pressure by its investors to earn a profit in the near future.

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