June 22 (Bloomberg) — Twitter Inc. plans to generate its first revenue this year from companies such as Dell Inc., Whole Foods Market Inc. and Starbucks Corp., which use the micro- messaging site to communicate with millions of customers.

“The idea is if they are getting value out of Twitter then we could add more value to what they are doing and we could get some revenue,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stonesaid in an interview today. “We think we’ll get to something this year, however simple, that shows we’re making some money.” He declined to give sales estimates for this year.

The San Francisco-based service could make money by verifying Twitter accounts, said Stone, so users “following” brands would know it was really Whole Foods or Coca-Cola Co. sending Tweets, or instant messages that can be 140 characters long. Twitter could also offer statistics to businesses detailing how effective their Tweets are and offer multiple accounts to large businesses with many branches, he said.