Like it or not, Twitter is one of the hottest sites on the internet.  The service allows a unique way to get updates on your friends, favorite celebrities, sports teams, and companies you like.  What was once a personal social networking tool is now becoming a hot business tool as well.

Twitter faces a monetization problem, though, much like an early Google.  It is taking aggressive steps to fix that, though.  It's made a wave of high profile acquisitions, including a tweet search platform in 2008 (Summize) and the acquisition this week of Tweetie, makers of the top Twitter app for the iPhone.  It also published its own Twitter app for the Blackberry.  Upcoming acquisitions may include a URL shrinker service and a Twitpic provider.

Now a Twitter spokesperson speaking with The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the company plans is rolling out "Promoted Tweets", essentially short text ads that would appear in your stream of followed microblogs.  Today, between 2 and 10 percent of users will receive the ads.

The internet site, currently valued at $1B USD, is looking to follow Google's search-advertising success.  During the initial deployment, it plans to work hard to tweak the implementation and pricing to make the service as profitable for it as possible, while trying to keep user annoyance to a minimum.

Twitter developers, who made a host of apps to fill in the platform's holes, aren't happy with the company and are promising to revolt.  After the Tweetie acquisition, the devs are looking to cook up their own Twitter rival.  Describes one dev, "Discussion is not whether to launch an open federated standard, but when."

The devs plan on holding secret meetings at an upcoming Twitter developers conference.  They've codenamed their insurrection Project Shark.  Describes one dev in tweetspeak, "Angry sharks eat big fat #fail whales."