There have been a number of reports over the last couple of days of the Twitter home page carrying new house ads promoting Twitter search and Twitter Widget. This is the first time that Twitter has carried any ads at all, and the fairly obvious conclusion is that this is a test for a future monetization effort.

There are some enormous potential revenue streams available to Twitter even as their growth has accelerated over the last three months. In public they have focused on search and brand opportunities but context-sensitive text advertising is a natural fit and would provide a powerful platform for advertisers.