ReadWriteWeb

One of the biggest tests of startup founder savvy is the period after you've just raised funding. It's akin to the Amish rite of passage rumspringa, as young and sometimes inexperienced founders are given the opportunity to explore new opportunities in the hopes that the experience will ground them and strengthen them as leaders. Unfortunately, many do not find their way back to the path of revenue, or even to a product roadmap.

This month we are offering some additional value to our long-term sponsors. It's a new type of contextual link advertising and we think it is important to the future of blogging as a business. For our wider audience, some of whom operate websites that are monetized through advertising, the background may be interesting.

While Twitter has been less than forthcoming on how they plan to monetize their service, there is no shortage of ideas from third parties on ways to get paid for spending time with Twitter. From pay-to-tweet to selling off the real estate on your Twitter background, there are any number of ways you could be making money off the service.

Now, there's another service that - much like RSS-based advertising - offers to pay you for advertisements that run in the midst of your tweet stream. Meet Magpie, an ad network for Twitter.

Last week we asked our readers to help Twitter find a revenue model. We received a great amount of responses that we hope Twitter can take into consideration. From API's to the traditional ad-based model, we heard it all. The topic at hand and the amount of responses generated would let anyone know that a revenue model for Twitter is pretty important for various reasons. Fred Wilson of venture capital firm, Union Square Ventures initially thought otherwise, but has recanted his statements. Nevertheless, VC backers of Twitter have noted that revenue models for the micro-blogging service will be coming in the first half of 2009.

Twitter is the poster child for the 'scale first, don't even think about revenue at launch, monetize much, much later' model of startup. In the current climate, ventures like that probably won't get funded. Which is a shame. Twitter is addictive and fun and even occasionally useful. If anybody can pull this business model off, it will be Twitter. It has scale, seem to be moving mainstream and they've even fixed their reliability issues.

But Twitter won't survive if it doesn't find a great revenue model. This matters to all of us.

The perennial debate surrounding Twitter's revenue model continues to live on. The micro-blogging service has succeeded in building a strong, loyal following, but failed to capitalize on it. Such a scenario, which lacks a revenue model, isn't sustainable over the long-term, especially when investors begin to question the company's intentions. If an acquisition isn't shaping up, monetization will be necessary to keep Twitter afloat. Having said that, leveraging context may prove to be a great way to drive revenues while maintaining the integrity of the platform.