When I first heard that Twitter would soon be testing a new means of advertising revenue, I won't lie - I got a little nervous.  My initial thought was that the people using Twitter plain and simply will not tolerate ads getting in their way.  Now, I know that Twitter needs a revenue model of some kind in order to keep up and running and growing, particularly at the rate at which it is (tweet volume grew by 16x from January ’09 to January ’10; source: Mashable).  But what that model would be has been in speculation for quite sometime.

According to All Things Digital, the Twitter ad model proposed will largely mirror Google's and will not interfere with users' Twitterstream.  The basics are this:

1. Ads will be present in search, the same way ads come up in Google search.  For instance, if you search for what people are saying about "smartphones," then an iPhone ad could show up.  It would only stay in the search stream, and it would be tailored to what users are searching for.
2. The ads will be no more than 140 characters, just like any other Tweet.
3. The article states that Twitter will work with brands and advertising agencies in order to "seed" the launch of this model, but that the hopes are that it would eventually become self-service like Google's.
4. Twitter will share the revenue from the ads with the advertisers.

Naturally, this is a test approach and has a lot of questions and details to be worked out.  The pricing model itself is one of those things in question.  Will it be a cost-per-click model like Google's, or will they try a different approach? 

Either way, I think it's a postive move that Twitter is seeking out a revenue model that lasts, while keeping user experience a top priority.

What do you think?  Is this innovative and does it make sense?  What do you think about how Twitter should monetize the business to keep it around?

~ Doniree Walker, for FRWD ~

Sources: Mashable, All Things Digital
Photo: found here