Twitter Opens Asia-Pacific Headquarters In Singapore, Plans To Double Workforce

In a bid to bolster its presence in the emerging economies, Twitter opened its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore Thursday. The microblogging site also reportedly plans to double its workforce in the country in the coming years.

The regional office, launched by Singapore’s Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim, will manage the site's various business functions such as sales, partnerships, marketing, human resources, finance, user services, legal, policy and trust and safety, CNBC reported.

“The Asia-Pacific region is already one of the largest and fastest growing regions for Twitter today, and there still is enormous potential to show people the value of our platform, from Japan to India to Australia," Shailesh Rao, Twitter's vice-president for Asia-Pacific, Latin America and emerging markets, reportedly said in a press release.

The launch of the 22,000-square-foot headquarters comes two years after the company opened its service office in Singapore, which currently has 80 staff members. Twitter plans to add at least 100 more over the next two years. “We need more capabilities and more people doing what they’re doing already,” in jobs such as sales, marketing and finance, Rao told the Wall Street Journal Wednesday.

Rao reportedly said in the news release that the company was “capitalizing on this growth in 2015 by making strategic investments across the region - from opening new offices and aggressively hiring staff, to acquiring companies and building local product experiences."

According to analysts, the Journal reported, Twitter is increasingly eyeing fast-growing Asian economies such as India and Indonesia as it looks for new users and advertising dollars. The company draws most of its revenue from advertising and now seeks to get a boost from such emerging markets. Twitter reached 302 million monthly active users in the first three months of 2015, with around 78 percent from outside the United States, the Journal reported.