Twitter aims for 1 billion users

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Twitter is aiming for 1 billion followers as it challenges Facebook for advertisers.

‘Twitter will get to a billion members,’ Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said at an event at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.

Williams, who took part in a chat with co-founder Biz Stone, did not give a time frame. An internal projection TechCrunch obtained predicted Twitter would reach that milestone by 2013.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking site, reaching 1 billion users was ‘almost a guarantee.’

Williams recently ceded his job as chief executive officer to Dick Costolo, who is targeting marketers’ advertising budgets as a major source of revenue for Twitter. The company also revamped its website to make it easier to post photos and videos in a move to attract more users and marketers.

Twitter, with more than 160 million registered users, now is the world’s third-largest social networking site, topping News Corp.’s MySpace, according to ComScore. Facebook is No. 1 and Windows Live Profile is No. 2.

-- Jessica Guynn