Twitter is happy alone

The boss of Twitter today said he had no regrets about turning down Facebook's $500 million takeover offer last year.

Evan Williams, chief executive of the social networking service, said: "Ultimately I didn't see a reason to sell.

"The point is to see what we can build. It doesn't get more interesting by being part of a bigger company."

He was arguably proved right last month when he succeeded in raising $100 million (£61 million) in venture capital which effectively valued the business at $1 billion, reflecting Twitter's exponential growth since the Facebook talks.

Williams was speaking as social networking moguls met at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to debate the future for the interactive internet. Williams added that his company spends "97%" of its time improving the product, rather than working out how to make money.

He admitted growth in US traffic had slowed temporarily.