Ever wish that you could take out a Twitter ad, but you just don’t have it in your advertising budget to do so? Well, Twitter has been talking about making advertising easier for some time now, and today Twitter finally announced how the company plans to do just that. By teaming up with American Express, Twitter is offering a $100 rebate to the first 10,000 people who sign up. But, wait, there’s a catch (you knew there’d be one, right?).

In order to take advantage of Twitter’s offer, you need to have an American Express card or accept American Express payments. You will also have to follow American Express through your Twitter account after you have been accepted. You also have to be considered a small business (sorry, no large corporations with massive advertising budgets need apply!).

Businesses Abound With Joy (Do Twitter Users?)

Small businesses that are able to take advantage of the current Twitter promotion might be rejoicing today, but one has to wonder how Twitter users are feeling. After all, this new Twitter ad promotion means that Twitter users will start seeing a lot more ads popping up. Presumably, this is also the first of many Twitter ad campaigns to come along. Facebook has been making the foray into the advertising world by mixing streams with ads, and it looks like Twitter is looking to follow suit.

If you happen to won a small business and you have or accept American Express cards, I’d certainly jump on the Twitter bandwagon. To sign up for this ad deal, simply head to the Twitter {{https://ads.twitter.com/amex/|Sign Up Page}}, enter your business information (remember, you have to have a legit small business to take advantage of this offer!), and wait. Twitter is set to send out some kind of formal press release this coming Friday, and the ads are ready to go public in March of this year. So, if you need some free Twitter ad space (and why not?), make sure to check out the link listed above for more details).

A Social Network Race Heats Up

An interesting side note to all of this has to do with Facebook’s initial IPO listing. If you’re been following investment and finance news, you know that Facebook recently had to disclose all of the risks that investors may take when investing in Facebook. Well, one of those (rather obvious) risks was that other social networking sites (like Twitter) might well eclipse Facebook. After all, Facebook can’t last forever, right?

Now that Twitter has forged ahead with a solid American Express ad campaign (which is more of an ad campaign than Facebook has right now, by the way), it sure looks like Zuckerberg will have some tough competition in the coming months. Investors will certainly have their eye on what Facebook plans to do marketing wise in order to keep revenue coming in. Thus far, it looks like Twitter has a much better revenue roadmap than Facebook does – too bad Twitter isn’t public (yet!).