With Twitter keeping mum, questions abound: What will this feature look like? Will it slow Twitter's already-taxed servers? And will people use it?

Twitter is keeping quiet about the possible new feature, first publicized by Mashable, but sent media this vague statement:

"We're constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android apps."

So, Twitter, here are the top questions in our minds about the "potential" new feature.

5 Questions About The New Tweet Media

Twitter's servers have enough trouble keeping up with text tweets - will including photos and video in streams on Twitter.com result in even more Whales?

The answer will depend on the display size of the photos and video and whether Twitter is hosting the media. It will be easier for Twitter to scale if it displays only thumbnail-sized images, as it does in its iPhone and Android apps, and relies on third parties to host the media - TwitPic has a thumbnail API, for example.

"I'm not sure what their implementation looks like but it is difficult to get right. It could theoretically add more strain," said Jason Shellen, CEO of Thing Labs.

Shellen runs the media-rich Twitter Web client Brizzly, was the lead product manager in creating Google Reader and was at the startup that sold Blogger to Google back in the day. So when he says scaling hosted media display is hard to get right, he's got a solid background from which to say it.

Twitter will likely have to, at least for a time, store more images than its doing now. But this would be a feature that they'll have the ability to disable system-wide if load gets too high, much like trends and search.

Will Twitter ever host images and video themselves?

Hosting images and video and displaying them large enough to see within the stream without having to click through would keep users on Twitter.com and potentially make it easier for Twitter to monetize its 100 million-strong user base. But that would mean extra infrastructure to allow users to upload media to Twitter and extra servers to store it.

Will Twitter censor photos and images that appear on Twitter.com?

Displaying images and video as thumbnails, or possibly larger, could introduce a risque element to Twitter.com. Will the company go the route of Apple and take measures to keep users "free from porn" and other unsavory content, or will the company let the stream go uncensored, potentially opening the doors further to XXX spammers?

What does this mean for third party clients?

This is likely to be the latest incident of Twitter adding features that strains the relationship between Twitter and its third party developers, as when the company bought the mobile reader Tweetie and re-released it as an official Twitter app - unless the company can implement the new feature in a creative way.

Twitter client Brizzly displays full-size photos and videos in its stream.

Services like Twitpic host media and get revenue by displaying ads. This revenue source would disappear if users no longer need to click through to see photos or videos - unless Twitter works out special relationships with third party clients.

YFrog is the default photo service in Twitter's iPhone app, suggesting a financial agreement between the companies. Perhaps Twitter would work out similar revenue-sharing arrangements with other media services.

We haven't heard what the third party media clients are thinking, but Shellen of Brizzly, which already offers inline media display, is optimistic about the impact. "I think there is more upside in the exposure than not," he said.

Will people use it?

From the beginning, the 140-character format was loved for its simplicity. But Facebook's News Feed and nifty apps like Flipboard incorporate multimedia into an aesthetic, cohesive and arguably more usable stream of updates from your friends.

Judging from the setting Twitter briefly inserted, users will see photos and videos posted by people they're following, no choice about it. Twitter will hide media from people you aren't following by default, but you can opt-in to see that too.

Some users might say that the low character limit was what made Twitter fun - but Twitter seems to be betting that 140 characters just isn't enough anymore.

Twitter has acquired two other companies so far, that we know of. Search engine and sentiment analysis service Summize became Twitter's own search engine and Values of N sold its assets so engineer Rael Dornfest could be brought into the company. Here are ten other startups we think that Twitter should consider acquiring next. Which kind of company would you most like to see become part of Twitter itself? We've got a poll below.

Some of these we think are likely acquisitions, some less so. In making this list we considered both functionality that would be helpful to have added to Twitter's own site and technology that would be worth buying instead of just building in-house. Whenever a platform company builds technology that a number of other startups offer, there is a risk of scaring other people away from investing in development that the platform could just reproduce. Acquisitions of startups on a platform probably increase the appeal of development though, as it's a chance to get in on the game.

Quite Likely, if It Hasn't Happened Already

Bit.ly is the most full-featured and popular URL shortener on the market right now and was recently selected as Twitter's own shortener of choice, dethroning TinyURL. Bit.ly offers all kinds of smart analytics, from real-time click tracking to semantic analysis of topic keywords from the links that people tweet.

One trusted industry source speaking on the condition of anonymity told us that Bit.ly servers "were moved into Twitter's racks months ago in preparation for this change" [of becoming the default shortener]. Bit.ly is becoming too important to Twitter to keep that functionality outside the company's own shop and the two companies share some investors. We will not be surprised at all if a Bit.ly acquisition by Twitter is announced sometime in the near future.

Could Happen...

Tweetmeme is another fast growing Twitter analytics service that tracks sharing on the service. With another chunk of new features just added today, the service is looking a whole lot like "Feedburner for Twitter" but with even more viral distribution possibilities. The Tweetmeme API is quite interesting and could complement Bit.ly quite well.

Twitpic is a popular way to share images on Twitter. The site faces a strong challenge from ImageShack's YFrog, but independent Twitpic would be a cheaper acquisition and is already well known among Twitter users. (Twitter should probably look at Enjoysthin.gs; it's got the best user experience.) An increase in imagery on Twitter would probably offer the company a lot more advertising real-estate.

Tweepz is a fascinating Twitter search engine that acts like a directory that lets you parse your results using various metrics gleaned from Twitter. Check out this search, for example. Twitter could benefit from making this kind of search available to users, advertisers and researchers - and Tweepz has already built it. See also Twazzup, another company doing interesting things with Twitter data.

Longer Shots

An iPhone app company could be a good buy for Twitter; there's certainly plenty of options. M.Twitter.com is a good mobile service already but someone specializing in super high-quality Twitter apps for the iPhone, Android and Pre could be good to bring in house. It could be AteBits, makers of Tweetie. There may not be enough reason for Twitter to buy one of these companies, though.

A desktop Twitter app company could help Twitter increase user engagement. Many of the most serious Twitter users (though not all) swear by desktop access. Twitter could acquire the most popular and arguably most innovative desktop app, Tweetdeck, or it could bring Seesmic in house. Tweetdeck would be cheap and shares investors with Twitter. Desktop apps may be too limited in appeal to be a compelling acquisition target.

Geo-location could be a good feature to add to Twitter. Search by user location could be made much more meaningful and the list of things that could be done with it is very long. Brightkite is popular and well developed, Shizzow is pretty and wouldn't be expensive. On the other hand, browsers themselves will likely all become more location aware in the near future and Twitter may be satisfied with its current location data.

A semantics company could bring structure to the Tweets, making them more useful and easier to advertise against. Right now links Tweeted are semantically analyzed by Reuters' Calais and sent to Bit.ly, but we wouldn't be surprised if Twitter was interested in scooping up a small semantics shop and helping it scale so that analysis was being done in house. Twitter may feel like semantics don't need to get that close to consumer users, though. (Disclosure, Calais is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.)

Topify is a widely loved service that intercepts your new Twitter follower notification emails and sends you much more useful ones. It's great but probably too easy for Twitter to just reproduce itself.

FriendFeed plus Twitter would be a match made in heaven. It would be an engineering powerhouse. It would be a step towards mainstream user adoption of FriendFeed, a service that can't make up its mind which end of the sophistication spectrum it's targeting. It's also quite unlikely to happen. If there's one related startup we can imagine turning down a Twitter acquisition offer, it's probably FriendFeed. (Though the investment-laden and highly ambitious OneRiot is a close second.) Nonetheless, it would be awesome if FriendFeed's cross-network aggregation, threaded conversations, groups, media support, search and more joined forces with Twitter.

Ultimately, it may be most likely that Twitter's next acquisition will be something vapid. A service that aggregates shopping Tweets, or celebrity Tweets, or something else that will fall short of taking advantage of the Twitter platform's huge potential to change the world. Twitter staff makes relatively simple use of its own service, so hoping that it will acquire companies that make it all the more powerfully sophisticated may be an early adopter's pipe dream. [Update: After some discussion this afternoon, I am thinking it's time to reconsider this position I've held for some time. Twitter staff is not full of dummies, I'm sure, and it has probably been inappropriate of me to write as if that's the case.]

Maybe not, though. We wouldn't be shocked to see Twitter pick up at least a few of the companies above. What do you think? Are there other services you'd like to see become part of the Twitter team even more than the above? It's a wild and woolly micro-content ecosystem out there - anything could happen.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Doug Coleman, Jolie O'Dell, Dana Oshiro , Lidija Davis and Steven Walling.