TWITTER has hired former Google executive Stephen McIntyre as its director of online sales and operations. Mr McIntyre will be based at Twitter’s European headquarters, which was established in Dublin late last year.

Mr McIntyre was most recently director of online sales and operations with Google and was based at its European operations centre in Dublin.

In his new role at Twitter he will oversee its self-service advertising platform, which is expected to launch next month.

Privately-held Twitter has enjoyed massive growth recently – one analyst firm estimated it passed 500 million users this week – but has been slow to introduce advertising or other revenue streams that might alienate users.