But, as we've seen with other social networks like Facebook, a certain amount of advertising will be tolerated----by the digital community.

If the sponsored tweets do stand up to the inevitable backlash, the opportunities for small businesses to get directly into a user's Twitter stream are incredibly powerful. This is partly because of the real-time nature of the platform, and partly because the format of exchanging small bites of information bites lends itself well to advertising.

If the commercialization of can be pulled off correctly, it could launch the company into the echelon of online marketing leaders such as Facebook and Google in its importance to small business owners.