Twitter may launch ad platform next month

Twitter, the microblogging phenomenon, is planning to launch an advertising platform within a month, probably at the South by Southwest conference.

Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost ...that "we are working on an ad platform, but it's only in the test phase."

 There is a suggestion that Twitter may use hash tags in tweets to indicate that the message is an ad. 

Banerji said when Twitter launches an ad platform, the company will make it "explicitly clear that a sponsor" paid for the ad, and make it "relevant and useful, so the user doesn't think of it as an ad."

Banerji called the hash tag ads a "workaround," for now. Twitter engineers have a better idea what will and won't work, he said.