Twitter opens the door to advertising

Rapidly growing microblogging site Twitter might have found a way to generate revenue. The social media platform, which has been around for two years, has been criticized throughout its recent growth spurt for having no discernible business model. A change to the company's terms of use on Thursday, however, allows Twitter to run advertisements if it so chooses.

Among its community, Twitter itself is the only party that has not been able to monetize its 44.5 million monthly visitors effectively (traffic as of June 2009, according to comScore). Many users work with Twitter to promote their brands, publicize deals and engage customers. Some services, such as Magpie, even serve ads into a user's Twitter stream, delivering a revenue opportunity for both Magpie and the user -- but not Twitter.