Twitter May Have Found A New Way To Make Money Off Of Non-Users

Kevork Djansezian/GettyTwitter CEO Dick Costolo

Twitter is planning to sell ad space on Twitter feeds embedded on other websites or apps, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The report said Twitter talked up this plan during the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show, as part of its effort to monetize non-Twitter users. 

If true, that means we'll start seeing ads within Twitter streams on 3rd party websites or apps. For example, ESPN's website shows a Twitter feed that aggregates all the tweets from its sports writers for each vertical. Those feeds are visible to all ESPN readers, meaning any ads placed there could be seen even by people who are not necessarily Twitter users.

It's unclear how exactly Twitter will carry out this idea, but the WSJ says Twitter is working on some form of revenue sharing plan with the publishers. ESPN and Flipboard have been mentioned as possible partners, although they haven't confirmed yet.

Twitter has been busy trying to diversify its revenue streams lately. In November, it announced plans to increase sales from $665 million in 2013 to $14 billion by 2024. To do so, it said it plans to increase the share of ads that appear in user timelines to 5% and to start showing ads to the 500 million non-logged-in users that see its streams. Twitter currently has only 60,000 advertisers, a tiny size compared to Facebook's 1.5 million.

We've reached out to Twitter for comment and will update this article when we hear back.