If you're a fiendish text-messager, or can't stay off all your buddies' Facebook walls, then you've probably already had a chance to check out Twitter, the micro-blogging service. Fans of Twitter use it from everything to coordinating with their friends to breaking big news, like yesterday's plane crash in New York.

As cool as it is, a lot of people have been scratching their heads trying to figure out how it can be a viable company. You don't pay to sign up, to follow the posts of friends, or to send the posts - tweets - in the first place. The site isn't riddled with ads, so how can Twitter make any money? It looks like the brains behind it finally came up with a solution, manifested as the new "suggested users" feature.

The idea is that companies looking to promote themselves can sign up to be included in the group. New users will want to flush out the list of users they follow, just to have something to read. They're therefore likely to be open to the idea of receiving tweets from companies like ESPN or the BBC, letting them know about the latest news. If each of these signups draws in a dollar from the sponsoring company, Twitter could be looking at a serious cash influx.

As a Twitter user, this should have little direct effect on your use of the service. The company is being really smart in making this non-obtrusive and totally opt-in. And if you didn't already know the BBC tweeted, and now you follow them due to the recommendation, so much the better; it's a win/win/win scenario for you, Twitter, and the sponsor.

If companies start seeing Twitter as a money-making platform, hopefully some of their interest will spill over to the scores of developers building free apps that play off of the Twitter service. Some, like TweetDeck, are in the processing of snagging some venture capital already, and just need to work on an ongoing revenue stream. Frankly, any move that gets more people working on ways to make Twitter more fun and functional is OK with us.

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