Twitter is announcing that they have got a new plan to make money from their ultra-popular micropublishing system. The New Plan: copy Google’s money-spinning search ads.
Twitter will let advertisers sign up to have their ads show up as tiny 140-word posts when users search through Twitter or through other search engines that use its API.

Peter Kafka describes it this way:

“A search for, say, “laptop,” may generate an ad for Dell. The ads will only show up in search results, which means users who don’t search for something won’t see them in their regular Twitterstreams…. The services will have the option of displaying the ads, and Twitter will share revenue with those that do.”

That’s a good enough way to start. It won’t really interfere with the current reading and publishing of the system, and allows the company some time to tune its algorithms. Google’s tech juggernaut runs on text ads, and still makes some 60% of its more than $20 billion annual revenue from these kinds of contextual ads placed next to search results.

Google makes about a third of its revenue from the AdSense program, which allows publishers to sign up and have little text ads run on their Websites.

That kind of program is the logical next step for Twitter, allowing users to sign up to have every 10th post, or so, be an ad placed through Twitter. That ad is related to something the user is talking about, or simply a branded ad placed because the advertiser likes a particular Twitterer’s audience.

While this new plan might be lucrative for Twitter, it risks alienating users.

Pundits and tech journalists have been wondering for years when and how Twitter would make money. Now here’s the answer…