Twitter to advertise to non-account holders in effort to boost slow growth

Twitter Inc. is finding ways to advertise to people who view tweets on its website without having an account, seeking to prove to Wall Street that its business can thrive even as membership growth slows. Promoted tweets — ads that appear intermittently throughout users’ timelines when they’re logged in — will now start to show up when Web surfers click through to a posting or profile on Twitter via tweets in Google search results or news stories, the company said. More than 500 million people visit Twitter every month without having an account, the company has said. By rolling out promoted tweets to these additional visitors, the company is expanding its advertising audience to more than 800 million potential consumers, CE O Adam Bain said.