If you’ve ever had a discussion with me regarding advertising on websites, you know I’m almost always perfectly fine with the concept. In fact, I can’t think of an instance where ads on a site bothers me at all. Over at my other, more nerdtastic blog, I’ve touched upon the topic of posting my own ads on Twitter. And now, the time has come. Twitter itself will be entering the dark side.

Note: If you’re a self proclaimed Twitter hater already, you may want to excuse yourself from this post. Of course, feel free to keep on reading.

For those of you who don’t know, there has been some pretty serious shifts going on over at Twitter. Previously, the company focused on maintaining their databases, application programming interface (API) and web based interface, leaving the rest of the functionality to third party developers. If you use Twitter, you know that there are a ton of different apps, mobile and desktop, to choose from, all ranging in quality and functions.

Over the last several weeks however, Twitter has started to enter the app realm. This, obviously, has gotten third party devs a bit nervous. While the company had never mentioned NOT making their own apps, it had, over time, become somewhat of a given. That said, Twitter is now the proud owner of Tweetie, one of the most popular twitter applications. Also, Twitter worked with Research In Motion, the creators of the Blackberry, to release the first application for the device.

While I’m very sympathetic to the developers who feel a bit betrayed, the more I read and think about the situation, it seems like a fairly obvious progression. And when you boil it down, it’s almost entirely about the almighty dollar. Up until this point, Twitter was basically funded by venture capital. With a free, albeit capped, API, Twitter allowed dozens of developers to utilize their data. These third party apps were either purchases or served ads. Be it on the iPhone, a desktop client or another web application, companies have been making money off of Twitter data for some time.  Now that they have an online community built, database and API systems polished and running strong, they are ready to take a piece of the pie they helped bake.

Though some argue that Twitter would have never been this popular without these third party apps, this chicken-egg debate matters very little. Twitter is going to advertise, and they’re going to advertise soon. In fact, if you use the search at Twitter.com, a large percentage of users are already seeing what’s referred to as a ‘Promoted Tweet’. From what I gather, this is only the beginning. Soon enough, there will be promoted tweets flowing freely through your twitter feed. A few people have began blocking the early advertisers like Starbucks, however, I feel like this won’t have much of an effect. Several articles assure me that regardless of your relationship with the company advertising, their tweet will be delivered.

And I, for one, welcome our new, twitter based, advertisement overlords. As I’ve always said, before complaining about your twitter feed’s purity being tainted, ask yourself one question:

How much do you pay to use Twitter?