Twitter plans to launch an Arabic version of its website as well as promoted tweets for the Middle East by 2011, said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, The National reported last Wednesday.

"People use [Twitter] differently around the world but people also use it similarly," said Stone in an interview. "The key takeaway there is that we've only translated the service into [six languages] ... but we're very keen on opening that up and getting it translated into more regions in the world sooner rather than later."

The microblogging website is already available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. However, "the use of Arabic-language characters will cause Twitter some technological headaches, much as their Japanese interface did," Fast Company explained.

Currently, Twitter has 175 million registered accounts and, according to Stone, 370,000 people register daily. Nonetheless, the site has low penetration in the Middle East and "faces competition from Watwet, a Twitter-like service in Arabic that by last year had registered about 25,000 users," The National pointed out.

Stone also reminded that Twitter recently launched promoted tweets, in which advertisers pay a fee to have their messages highlighted in users feeds. "Our limited group of advertisers are thrilled with it and we have tons of people are knocking at our door because the engagement rates are so incredible high." The company plans to expand the service, by opening to all users, and by partnering with advertisers.