Twitter will officially support the Do Not Track feature in browsers, Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission, announced on Thursday. Twitter itself confirmed its compliance in a tweet shortly after the announcement, meaning those who visit the site will be able to opt out of cookies that collect personal information.

This places Twitter in contrast to services like Facebook, which aggressively collects data on users and non-users alike (a site must actively support Do Not Track in order to prevent information collection; Facebook is not yet one of those sites). By complying with Do Not track, Twitter allows visitors to opt out of cookies that collect personal info, as well as third-party cookies that collect information for the use of advertising networks.

On one hand, this is Twitter continuing its support for user privacy—on May 8, the company fought back against a government subpoena for the tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester. But this may also show the company's intent to draw a line in the sand with regard to its business model.

For a long time, Twitter was not monetized at all, and in the last two years it started earning money by allowing businesses to pay to promote tweets and accounts on the site. By opting in to Do Not Track, Twitter may be setting itself up to advertise based only on what is given directly to them in users' profiles, tweets, and public on-site behavior, rather than supplementing that information with cookies, as services like Google and Facebook do. Of course, not everyone opts in to Do Not Track, so Twitter's support doesn't necessarily blow away that business opportunity.

"We’re excited to see an industry leader building this privacy innovation into their design," said James Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media. Steyer notes that the new level of information control could be particularly beneficial to Twitter's teen users.