Twitter is clearly set its aim on starting to make money from the social networking service. Previously Twitter has taken allot of flack from media for not having a business plan and worrying everybody that its future may look bleak if it could not generate any revenue.

Twitter then launched what they called promoted tweets, which showed us that there are plans to generate an income. Promoted tweets is a service where advertisers can buy top search result on certain Twitter keywords and then when users search for it their tweet will be shown right at the top.

Today upon logging in to Twitter I noticed something new, something that wasn’t there before. Its called promoted trending topics and Disney/Pixar is the first to utilise it for their new up and coming movie Toy Story 3.

Twitter normally only displays the top ten trending topics, but if you look now you will see an 11th one added called Toy Story 3. Next to it in a big yellow box it clearly states that this trending topic is promoted.

The new promoted trending topic works in the same way as normal trending topics in the sense that if you click on it, it will display all results of users tweeting about the topic.

Its clear that Twitter is testing out different ways to monetise the social networking service, if it is enough only time will tell, but one thing thats for sure is that its a very unique way of advertising.

Google recently signed a deal with micro blogging site Twitter to index Twitter feeds in real time. The end result is Google’s real time search.

Imagine you need to head into Cape Town but would like to know how the traffic is to plan your trip. Well all you would have to do with Google’s real time search is type in CapeTraffic and it would show you latest tweets from the CapeTraffic hash being used by Capetonian tweeters.

Not only does Google Real Time Search index Twitter in real time but freshly published web pages, Tweets, MySpace updates and shockingly, Facebook public profiles. Check out the demo video below.

Want to see real-time results for any query right now? Go to http://google.com/trends and click on any of the hot topics on that page. Replace the search query in that page’s URL with a new search term and if real time results are available, you’ll be able to see them.

Awesome don’t you think?

A while back Microsoft announced that they will be rolling in a update on the XBox 360 console to enable users to Twitter, Facebook and Last.FM from the comfort of their couch on a big screen TV.

So last night I decided that its time to test out this functionality. Using the applications is really straight forward, just log in with your credentials and away you go.

The Twitter interface looks really sleek and nice, but just don’t try to do a status update with your remote control. Writing the update is really time consuming as you need to move around the on-screen keyboard with your remote control to find the correct letters, not worry, all I did to avoid this was pop in a usb keyboard and all was well again.

All the the Xbox 360 now lacks is a browser, would be cool to be able to open up the links on tweets and view them. Me hold thumbs that they do not implement IE on the Xbox 360.

Here is a screenshot taken from GameSpy

Just now when I logged into my Twitter account via the web I was greeted with the following screen.

I am now part of the Twitter Retweet beta group. This means I will now start to see retweets in a new way on the web. Retweets will no longer contain the RT prefix but will contain a new special icon as displayed in the screen above and a Retweeted by description below the tweet.

My tweets now also contain a new retweet link next to current reply link.

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