As a result, marketers, advertisers, and bloggers alike are all raising concern. Is it necessary for the government to intervene? A problem does exist since consumers are directly affected by paid and sponsored posts, but is government regulation the answer?

Brian Solis, the Principal of FutureWorks, conducted a study on Facebook to explore possible solutions. He found that while most everyone agreed that disclosure was the key to solving the issue, they could not agree on a standard format.

Will disclosure be included in the FTC’s new guidelines? Could these issues be resolved without government intervention?

Since the FTC is expected to release their guidelines at any time, we might not have to speculate for much longer.

Update 10/6/09: The FTC has released their guidelines as reported by Chris Crum here and here. Stay tuned for a new video on the topic coming soon.

As the service continues to develop, Brett says tools are and will continue to emerge that help define what type of Twitterer each user is. One such tool is Klout, which conducts a Twitter analysis on each user to measure his or her influence across the Web.

Another result of Twitter’s extreme popularity is a new type of search engine that has risen up. These search engines are real-time and instead of indexing pages across the Web, they index conversations taking place in the social Web. A couple of examples of these search engines are Topsy and Scoopler.

How do you see Twitter evolving in the future?