• Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, December 9, 2008 11 AM

"How will Twitter make money?" recently became a $500 million question after it was revealed that Facebook was willing to offer that much (mostly in stock options) to buy the microblogging service. Not bad for a company that at the time had no known revenue source. However, according to the Los Angeles Times, all that has finally changed, as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced recently that the company would start charging the likes of JetBlue, Comcast and Dell for their corporate accounts. In exchange, Twitter will help these companies build corporate-exclusive features.

Stone and his fellow Twitter founders are kicking around a slew of other ideas, too. One is an identity verification tool -- but he was clear that the company is not considering advertising as a revenue stream. Not anytime soon, at least.

However, just because Twitter isn't placing ads on its pages doesn't mean that others won't. Indeed, third party developers like Twittad allow users to list a price and time frame for advertisers to place a static graphic ad in the background of their Twitter pages. So far, the service has attracted more than 1,600 sign-ups and 170 advertisers, according to its CEO. Magpie is another ad network that inserts ads as Twitter messages directly into a user's profile. One user describes the controversial service as a "horror show," as tweet ads distract users from legitimate conversation.

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