Twitter may be the hottest thing on the internet right now but even with its popularity the microblogging platform that has become the platform of choice for many celebrities and artists has yet to make money.

The people behind Twitter are now trying to make the venture profitable by changing its terms to potentially open itself up to advertisers.

In the Twitter blog, Biz Stone the co-founder of Twitter, said that they are trying to “keep our options” open.

There were no exact details given about how to open Twitter to advertisers. But the company has been studying different ways to generate revenue from the service that has seen phenomenal growth since it went public in 2006. Some of the other ways being thought of is to charge for commercial accounts.

Also recently, Twitter started giving out authenticity badges as a sign that the person who owns the account is who they say they are. This has been seen as something that corporate entities may be interested in buying.

The Blog Herald’s Thord Daniel Hedengren invited three heavy hitters in the blog network industry for our sister site’s first roundtable discussion. Those invited were:

• Jeremy Wright, CEO of b5media
• Collis Ta’eed, CEO of Envato
• Mike Rundle, triad member of 9rules

The discussion revolves around the health of the blog network business model, the current financial situation, and today’s ideal blog network setup, among others.

Read the full discussion here.

We received an anonymous tip last October 1 from a person claiming to be a “b5 Blogger.” Here’s the message he left on our Contact page:

b5 media is cutting our pay by at least half. They said it’s because our stats were wrong for the past three years and now they’re going to be right. The thing is the pay is lowering for most of us by 50% or more. A significant decrease. No one will talk about our base pay so we don’t know if that’s going down too but we’re going to be paid a lot less money now.

Everyones afraid to talk about it because they don’t want to be sued but one member of the team and a channel editor already left because of this and so did some bloggers.

Feel free to use this news but please don’t ask my name. I need my paltry pay until I find a new job. I don’t think I’ll sign the new contract.

We welcome any reactions and clarifications, especially from the network involved, b5 Media.

Syntagma Media’s John Evans has published an article on the recent hardships endured by blog networks, which are tied to the economic downturn.

So what has the title of our post got to do with that? Well, that’s Evans’ answer to a timely question: What to do if you’ve invested heavily in an internet business, such as a blog network?

Evans writes:

Providing content on your own platform as both writer and publisher makes sense because it cuts costs. Hiring other writers to do it for you made sense three years ago, but with advertisers shunning small-to-medium operations it’s probably easier to flip burgers.

Now we need a second bounce to reflate the whole business of working successfully online.

Read the full post at Syntagma.

Shiny Media has announced it has secured investor funding amounting to US$ 4.5 Million. The investor in this case is Bright Station Ventures, run by entrepreneur Dan Wagner.

Andy Merrett has stated at the Blog Herald that the capital infusion gives Bright Station Ventures 50% ownership of Shiny Media.

In Shiny Media’s announcement, CEO Ashley Norris writes:

I don’t have a great deal to say at this moment other than to state the bleeding obvious that we are hugely excited about how we can use the cash to develop Shiny.

We started Shiny with nothing other than some great ideas and a passionate belief in the potential of blogs. We now attract almost three million readers each month to our 22 sites, employ over thirty bloggers (some full-time, some freelance) and regularly attract big name advertisers.

We have come a very long way in a short space of time with no money. The investment will help us make some of more ambitious dreams realities.

Shiny Media fashions itself as the largest publisher of blogs in Europe. This new development should make it easier for Shiny to pursue its plans–though, hopefully the new partnership would not have an adverse effect on the creative aspect of Shiny’s blogs.