Source: Twitter's Ad Platform Launches Tonight

Twitter’s long awaited new advertising platform launches tonight, we’ve heard from a source briefed on the project. The model? It’s very much like Tweetup product that launched just last night – think Google Adwords for Twitter searches and hashtags, and advertisers can bid on individual keywords. Update: Multiple reports confirm that Twitter’s ad platform is about to launch — see our full details here.

Sponsored (or, paid) Twitter messages will appear above normal search results, says our source. And there may be an “Adsense” syndication format as well that third parties like Seesmic, TweetDeck, etc. can tap into for a revenue share.

We were not briefed on the the new platform but we’ve heard that others were, there may be more details coming out shortly. The product will officially debut at Twitter’s Chirp conference on Wednesday.

It was about a year ago that we said it was time to start thinking about Twitter as a search engine with search monetization mechanics. That’s the monetization model Twitter is betting on.