Twitter plans 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 site also 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 US$50m 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.