Twitter puts trillions of tweets up for sale to data miners

Company plans to make content generated by users available to commerce, academia and even police involved in crowd control

You are travelling by plane to see your newborn grandchild. As you board the aircraft, the cabin crew address you by name and congratulate you on the arrival of a bouncing baby boy. On your seat, you find a gift-wrapped blue rattle with a note from the airline.

In Twitter data strategy chief Chris Moody's vision of the future, companies surprising their customers like this could become an everyday occurrence - made possible because Twitter is listening.