Twitter Brazil office to open

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Twitter is planning to open an office in Brazil after 40 million in the country subscribed to the social networking site.

The US company will set up shop in Sao Paulo, according to Reuters, in order to make its money the same way Facebook has, as the rival site has already opened its office in the business capital.

"We believe our new office in Brazil will allow us to get closer to the users and show the value of our platform," the company's new country manager for Brazil, Guilherme Ribenboim, 40, told Reuters in a recent interview.

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"Brazil has rather mature internet and advertisement markets. Our audience is very big and active. We are going to try to monetize it."

South America's largest nation is second in the number of Twitter accounts it holds, after the US, and fifth in usage, noted Paris-based market intelligence firm Semiocast. Its growth, however, is slow due to the popularity of Facebook, which overtook Google's Orkut in Brazil with over 36 million visitors in January 2012.

Only one-third of Brazil's tweets are posted from mobile devices, reported The Next Web, which is half the amount posted from those same devices in the US.

Two other good reasons Twitter is targeting Brazil are the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics Games, which the country will host. According to Reuters, a record 150 million messages were sent during last year's London Games.

"The World Cup and the Olympic Games offer huge opportunities to leverage and show the potential of Twitter," said Ribenboim. "It is already happening. We are talking (to advertisers) looking for opportunities, strategies."