Pretty simple question – have you ever clicked on a link in Twitter and gone on to make a direct purchase because of that click?

It’s a basic yes/no, but I’d like you to really think about it before answering. Certainly don’t dismiss this out of hand without some consideration.

Remember, this can be anything that resulted in a sale being made to you because of an interaction on Twitter – for example, a link that went to a book on Amazon that you bought. Or a t-shirt. Or a video game. Or a DVD.

Or it might even be participation in an affiliate program, or maybe somebody linked an eBay auction to Twitter, and you ended up clicking on the ‘buy it now’ button.

Anything. The only important part is the process began on Twitter, and ended with a sale.

(Note that I’m not asking if you’ve ever bought anything from Twitter. Those opportunities are yet to come.)

Hit the comments to expand on what it is that you purchased. I’m genuinely curious and would love to know the role that Twitter played in that sale.

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It’s been a huge year for Twitter. Huge.

Twelve months ago it was an evolving but fairly low-key social network where the most popular user had about sixty thousand followers.

Now, it’s an internet giant that has forced Facebook and Google to continually revise and re-evaluate their mission statements, and been embraced by the global media and general populace at an unprecedented level. And 220 users now have more than one million followers.

But what I want to know is: how important is Twitter to YOU?

I’d like you to consider this from the perspective of how you would feel if Twitter suddenly disappeared tomorrow. How would that make you feel? How would it impact your day-to-day life?

Please choose your answer in the poll below, and I encourage you to follow this up in the comments section.

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Like it or not, advertisements are coming to Twitter, and they’re coming soon.

“Twitter will have an advertising business, ready in the near future, and available to partners.” ~ Dick Costolo, Twitter COO.

The company has to make money. Nobody knows how or even where Twitter is going to implement this business model – Robert Scoble speculates it might come in the form of a supertweet – but this was always something of an inevitability. It’s also a bit of a no-brainer – Twitter is becoming so huge, ignoring this opportunity would be more than a little foolish.

But here’s the thing: they have to get it right. This is art as much as it is science or technical wizardry, trying to balance an online advertising model that is effective inasmuch as people see and click on the ads, but not at the expense of millions of others who categorise it as little more than spam. (And Twitter already has some pretty major issues there.)

Google is the benchmark for this, and Facebook has modelled their own advertising system after the Mountain View giant. But both of these have the luxury of the full screen to play with (they’re not limited to 140 characters), and the knowledge that their visitors are coming directly to them, and not viewing a version of their site through any number of external software clients. Whatever ads Twitter supports need to also go out to Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck, Tweetie, HootSuite et al, otherwise around three-quarters of the user-base will be completely untapped.

And what about disclosure? Does an ad have to clearly be labelled as such? And if so, what does that mean for the tens of thousands of Twitter accounts now that do nothing but link to affiliate schemes and ‘power systems’? Aren’t they ads, too? Or do only official Twitter ads count?

It will also be interesting to see if Twitter allows its users to participate in the revenue stream, like with Google’s Adsense program. After all – if they’re going to be making money off my tweets, shouldn’t I be entitled to a little of that myself? If not, then don’t be surprised to see a Firefox-style AdBlock bolt-on being made available to Twitter users shortly after ads are turned on.

Right, on to the poll. Let’s assume ads are a given – that sooner rather than later, we’ll start to see ads show up somewhere when we use Twitter. I want to hear how you feel about that. Please complete the poll below, and hit the comments to flesh out your thoughts.

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I loosely made this point over at Chris Brogan’s blog a few moments ago in an excellent article he has written about the audacity of free – that is, how increasingly people are objecting to having to pay for things in an online world.

A while back I polled my readers about whether they’d ever pay for Twitter. As it stands, only about 25% said that they would.

This got me thinking.

If tomorrow you logged on to Twitter and were suddenly informed that it was now a premium service that was charging $1/month (ongoing) or $10/year to access the service, how would you react? Let’s say you had 30 days to make-up your mind and/or backup your stuff. After that, your account was unavailable – unless you paid.

For me, I’d gladly pay. Twitter is easily worth $1/month to me. I wouldn’t think twice about it. Twitter has an estimated 25 million users, and if everybody saw things like I do that would mean quarter-of-a-billion dollars of revenue per annum. Sure, I’d like to see that money invested back into Twitter – and by that I don’t mean Ferraris for Biz and the gang – but if it would mean the service could move strongly onwards and upwards, I’d be 100% behind it.

The pros of paying for a social network:

• Even at a low rate like $1/month, overnight you’d remove 99% of the spammers, trolls, bots, stalkers and good old-fashioned weirdos
• Because you’re paying for a service using a credit card, Twitter can easily verify you’re a real person. No more anonymity, and the perils that it brings
• Twitter can re-invest that subscription rate into a world-class professional network, and importantly
• It could remain independent

The cons:

• It cost you $1

Really, I see very little downside. But I’m not the norm. As Chris points out in his piece, many object to paying for anything, especially if they’re used to it being free.

So, here’s my question.

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Once you’ve voted, please share your thoughts in the comments area below.

PS. To clarify, Twitter hasn’t made this announcement. I’m just curious how you’d react if they did.

This poll is simply for curiosity’s sake, and I want to share with you this hypothesis: the more time people spend on Twitter, the less celebrities they end up following.

It’s certainly true for me. Back in the day (maybe a heady six months ago) when I was young and naïve, I was probably following fifty celebrities on Twitter. Now I’m following precisely twelve: Robert Llewellyn, Dara O’Briain, David Mitchell, Derren Brown, Hugh Hefner, Graham Linehan, Gregg Wallace, Jimmy Carr, Jon Ronson, Peter Serafinowicz, Jonathan Ross and the obligatory Stephen Fry.

(Out of interest, three of the above follow me, too. I’ll leave you to guess who that might be.)

Why? Various reasons, but most of them revolve around the fact that Twitter is a fantastic leveller. It takes more than simply being famous. That might ensure you a lot of early interest, but to keep our attention you actually have to be interesting.

I’d like you to share how many celebrities you follow in the poll below, and also to write up a little bit about it in the comments.

Which famous folk are you following, and why? Who have you unfollowed? Are you following less celebrities now than you were a few months ago?

You may know the name of every celebrity you follow by heart, but if not, here’s how you do it:

1. Go to FriendOrFollow.com.
2. Type in your username, and wait a few moments.
3. The first page you see will show you everybody who you are following that isn’t following you back. Check for any celebrities.
4. Click on the ‘Fans’ and ‘Friends’ tabs, and check for signs of any celebrities in here.
5. Tip: if you re-sort the pages by number of followers, that usually makes the celebrity accounts easier to spot, as they’re typically nearer the top.

(You can do this with anybody else you like, too. It’s quite fascinating to check out who famous folk are following, particularly when they’re not being followed back by that person.)

If that seems like too much work, feel free to simply make a guess. Try and be as accurate as you possibly can.

I’m talking proper, old-fashioned celebrities here. People who were famous before they came on to the internet. So, for example, Robert Scoble, famous as he is on Twitter and in the world of technology, doesn’t qualify. Conversely, Ashton Kutcher, Ellen Degeneres, Russell Brand, Pearl Jam, Ryan Seacrest, Britney Spears, Shaq, Oprah and Coldplay do.

That said, the concept of celebrity remains a fairly difficult one to pin down. Lots of folk are simply famous for being famous, and many household numbers in one country are complete unknowns in another. So, here’s the thing: if they’re famous to you, then they’re famous.

And please check with FriendorFollow before voting! The numbers of people who are putting the wrong number is unreal. Yes, comedians are celebrities. Yes, famous authors are celebrities. Yes, atheletes are celebrities. And yes, anybody who is famous in the ‘real world’ is a celebrity! It’s not just the Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers of this world.

(Also, if you follow just one celebrity, please, please, please write about who this is in the comments below.)

Who you follow can reveal quite a lot about you, I think.

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And please remember not to lie. After all, we can easily check you out on FriendOrFollow, ourselves.