So unless you've been living under a large rock (with no wifi), you'll have read that Twitter has announced that businesses can now purchase "promoted tweets" - tweets that will appear as part of the results page when users search. It seems like a pretty smart, user-focused move and one that a lot of folks will be watching super closely. They claim that any tweets that don't resonate well with the audience (ie. get retweeted) will disappear. They also say that users will only be subject to one promoted tweet per results page. It's the second big ad model announced this week (following up after Apple's in-app iAd framework from yesterday). How will it all go? Who knows? But it's all verrry interesting to watch. Does it mean users who never search will not ever see promotional tweets? (How many times does the average user search Twitter?) What's going to be the first creative use of promoted tweets? Will Justin Beiber ever stop being a trending topic? Lots of questions ahead.

Update from Ashley: I saw this announced at the Ad Age Digital conference and a few more details. There was a lot of Twitter activity when it was being discussed

1: It's being tested with search just to iron out initial kinks. It will then be rolled out to more areas
2: No mention of pricing model
3: No real mention of location or geo-targetting
4: CPM model initially
5: Ads will be given a "resonance" score and this score will determine if your tweet will continue to be promoted
6: Launch partners are Virgin America (launching a new route through it exclusively), Bravo and it seems Starbucks.
7: Revenue sharing for publishers and apps (like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic) and some more details revealed tomorrow at a developers conference
8: You will be able to promote multiple Tweets and the system will automatically pick the one with the best resonance.
9: Resonance will NOT be available for general tweets just for promoted ones you paid for. This seems like a real lost opportunity.

It looks like Google Adwords 1.0 right now