• eMarketer et al., Monday, January 24, 2011 12:38 PM

Thanks to more interest from increasingly tech-savvy marketers, eMarketer on Monday said it expects Twitter to triple revenue this year to $150 million.

"One good sign ... is that ad sales on Twitter are following a pace of growth similar to that of Facebook, which is, of course, wildly profitable," writes Fast Company. "To further boost ad sales, Twitter will likely implement DIY marketing tools for small businesses ... which will be similar to offerings from Google and Facebook."

"Twitter ads; which are in the form of promoted tweets and trends, provide exactly what TV ads don't: interactivity and engagement," writes Business Insider. "As brand ad dollars go online, Facebook will probably get most of it, but Twitter is very well positioned to get more than its fair share."

As ReadWriteWeb notes, the $150 million figure certainly goes a long way in answering one of Twitter's perennial questions: "What's your revenue model?"

That said, the top microblogging platform still has a lot to prove, according to eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. "In 2011 it must work overtime to give its early advertisers a positive experience," Williamson said in a report issued Monday. "If Twitter can grow its user base and convince marketers of its value as a go-to secondary player to Facebook, it will succeed in gaining revenue."

Twitter's advertising business is still in what MediaMemo calls "the just-getting-started phase."

For better or worse, "Twitter ... is competing for advertising dollars with larger companies such as Google Inc. and social-networking rival Facebook Inc," writes Bloomberg. Therefore, "The company will need to boost its user base while demonstrating that ads posted on its pages are effective."

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