Like other social network sites, Twitter gets its money from advertising. It is still much smaller than Facebook and of course much smaller than Google, and some say it has been a bit slow to take advantage of the advertising opportunities that exist. It started using an ad suite in 2010, but it is only in the last months that it has really started using its promotional opportunities. One of the major sources of revenue is promotional tweets, for big brands like Starbucks, that appear at the top of your searches - these are only now getting very prominent, although they were first launched two years ago.

The latest Twitter feature is a media buying platform. This should make it much easier for smaller businesses to advertise on the network, and if this and other projects work out well, they are expecting their revenues to reach $1 billion in the next four years.