> This following idea seems pretty obvious, now that I've had a need for it,
> so I guess will also have occurred to you guys.
>
> One route to revenue for Twitter could be by providing an ad server as part
> of your API. Anyone who writes a 3rd party app who wants to put ads on it
> can ask Twitter for appropriate ads to display. 3rd party apps very
> commonly deal with Twitter screen names (often that the user provides). The
> app would send the screen names as an argument to the API call to give
> Twitter context. You guys have all the tweets, the user connections, have
> done the mining etc., so you're in the best position to know what to serve
> as an ad.
>
> I like this model a lot. It plays to your strengths, it gives the growing
> 3rd party app community something valuable, and it's not that hard to get
> something up & running, to monitor, and to refine it as you get smarter
> about what to serve.
>
> Terry

What I find funny about this whole debate is that I see the same arguments that cropped up when people first heard about Twitter.

“But it’ll be full of spam.” “It’ll be easy to game the system.” “What’s the value?”

This new advertising model might not work at all. But is it really a good idea to dismiss it for the same old reasons?

Yes, you own your tweets. As Scoble said, tweets are sacrosanct.

You won’t have as much control over SuperTweets. If you don’t like that, you shouldn’t use the SuperTweet service.

It’s like writing for a newspaper–you’d better be comfortable with the publisher’s ability to control and manipulate your articles. That’s just part of the territory, and if that makes you uncomfortable (a perfectly reasonable response), you’d best find another venue.