For a while now, eyes have been on Twitter, wondering exactly how the service will monetize itself.  This has been amplified by recent changes Twitter is making with its features and staff. Especially looking at how microblogging doesn’t lend itself to easy advertising (no way to attach pictures or traditional advertisements to 140 characters at a time.)

The first offering would be “Promoted Tweets”. Paul Verna at Emarketer discusses its early turnout,

Early participants included Virgin America, NBC Universal’s Bravo and Red Bull. Virgin America used Promoted Tweets to announce an expansion into Toronto and a 50%-off promotion for the first 500 travelers who flew from two California airports into the Canadian city. Adweek reported that the promotion sold out in 3 hours.

The article also mentions that Red Bull reported “engagement rates … higher than typical cost-per-click and CPM advertising.”

However, he is quick to mention that even these bright results are not as glowing as they might look. 500 tickets isn’t that much for a giant airline like Virgin America, and other campaigns look promising but aren’t the windfall that the industry would like to see from Twitter.

Social media sites like Facebook are capable of gigantic revenue—mostly due to their already on-the-web format allowing traditional visible traditional advertisements. It may be yet unfair to compare such sites to microblogging platforms. Twitter may have a large reach, but they will have to keep trying to fly to heights as quickly as and broadly as Facebook.

The other offering from Twitter is the @earlybird Exclusive Offer program. This Twitter account that tweets limited-time offers and discounts to followers and provides a powerful interface for potential consumers to then follow the individual accounts of participating dealers. Studies of the use of twitter to follow products and companies show that most users like to use Twitter to receive updates on future products, so getting discounts and deals on upcoming product will mostly likely be a huge draw for both customers and those companies who want to connect to them.

In the first month of operation @earlybird grew to 164,000 followers.

A promising start, but if they take too long to get off the line and onto the track, Twitter may be left in the dust.