Two of the biggest names in the British technology sector have thrown their weight behind a start-up operation aimed at providing easier access to Twitter, the social networking and microblogging site.

Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute.com, and Michael Birch, founder of Bebo — which was sold to AOL for $850 million last year — are impressed with the idea and are among a team of investors who have ploughed $2 million (£1.2 million) into TweetDeck.

Since it was launched a year ago, the business, founded by Iain Dodsworth, a former computer developer, has become the most popular Twitter application. About 10 to 15 per cent of all so-called tweets — messages put out on Twitter — are now sent via TweetDeck. The browser allows users to group the people they follow on Twitter and more easily organise the messages they receive.

TweetDeck also now works with Facebook and Mr Dodsworth plans to extend the application to cover other popular sites.

Mr Hoberman and Mr Birch made their investment through PROfounders Capital, a new investment fund for young internet companies. It aims not only to raise money for its investors, but also to unearth and help to develop the next generation of internet stars to follow the likes of Skype and Facebook.

Twitter is one of the best-known names on the web. Its ten million users, who include celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown, wife of the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, post short updates on their activities — tweets — of up to 140 characters via the website or a mobile phone.

According to comScore, the internet market researcher, more than 3.5 million people signed up to TweetDeck in the first two months of this year alone. It has broken big news stories, presenting the first witness reports from the Mumbai terrorist attacks and from aircraft crashes in Denver and New York.

Mr Dodsworth launched TweetDeck after he became frustrated at missing messages from friends on the Twitter site. He said: “It was quite chaotic and everything flows too quickly, so I was missing tweets.”

A contract with a City company that he had been working on had just expired, so he turned his hand to solving the problem. It was intended initially for his personal use, but soon spiralled into a popular public browser.

The business, which now employs six people, received its first funding injection this year — for $300,000 from a group of investors, including Betaworks in the United States.

PROfounders, whose members also include Peter Dubens, the entrepreneur best known for building up Pipex, the internet business, has already raised £20 million and aims to have a £50 million funding pot by Christmas. The company says that the recession has left a large funding gap for innovative, web-based companies with low overheads that want to raise relatively small amounts of capital — between £500,000 and £2.5 million.

Sean Seton-Rogers, general partner of PROfounders, said: “A lot of funds are focused on making sure that the companies they have already invested in survive, they are internally focused, but we are ready to build this legacy. We are open for business and looking for deals.”

The company, he said, has “a unique collection of entrepreneurial capital and knowledge” to invest in the future successful businesses of Europe.

PROfounders has targeted internet businesses, in particular, he said, because of their investor friendliness. “They tend to be capitalefficient with low overheads and can grow very quickly.”

Although sites on the internet had undergone peaks and troughs, the web was still experiencing explosive growth, he said. “What do people do now when they get up in the morning? They check their Twitter, e-mail and Facebook.”

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