Twitter, Inc. is planning to increase diversity within its workforce by increasing its female workers and workers of underrepresented minorities, according to a blog post from Twitter's website.
The company wants their people working in them to represent the vast range of people using Twitter.
"We want the makeup of our company to reflect the vast range of people who use Twitter," the company said in the blog post. "Doing so will help us build a product to better serve people around the world."
Twitter has set company-wide hiring goals to try and achieve the diversity it seeks.
Twitter said in the blog post that it plans to increase the overall number of women working in the company to 35 percent by 2016.
The company also plans to increase by 16 percent the number women working in tech roles and the number of women in a leadership role by 25 percent.
The Los Angeles Times adds that Twitter's target increase is one percentage point higher from the current number of women working in the company, which is at 34 percent.
The one percentage point increase represents about 41 more women that the company of 4,100 will be adding to its workforce.
Twitter also said in the blog post that it plans to increase the overall number of underrepresented minorities in its U.S. offices to 11 percent by 2016.
The company will also be increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in tech role and leadership role by 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
The Los Angeles Times adds that the company's underrepresented minorities represent mostly blacks and Latinos.
The company's target increase of 9 percent in tech roles is up one percentage point from the current number of Twitter's underrepresented minorities in tech role, which is at 8 percent.
A diversity expert said that Twitter's announcement of its goals to increase the diversity of its workforce is a start.
"Last year there was a trend to release [diversity] data, which was great," Melinda Epler, the founder of Change Catalyst, a platform that supports women entrepreneurs, told the Los Angeles Times.
"Setting goals is a next step in the right direction," she added.
Twitter first shared their ethnic and diversity data last year, according to the blog post.
Upon sharing the data, they also committed the diversification of its workforce as a critical business issue.
