Twenty-six percent of businesses using Twitter say they'd pay for the right services, and that might just be good enough.

WebBizIdeas.com polled 850 Twitter business users about what services would lead them to pry open their wallets. Three quarters of them said they either weren't crazy or were unsure about paying for additional features like analytics (31% and 43%, respectively), which sounds like a menacing amount. Yet, the size of this social media environment may make the 26% sufficient.

In spite of the trend in the advertising industry to multi-platform ad buys, mixed between TV, the Internet and mobile, the majority of the ad sales for the fall have been slated for TV, with minimal digital ads on the Internet sold separately. With 80% of ad time already spent for the upcoming television season during the "upfront" time period, the Internet looks forgotten. Why?

"We didn't push them," Mike Shaw, president of sales and marketing at The Walt Disney Company's (NYSE: DIS) ABC TV told USA Today, because supply is flexible, "digital offerings aren't as demand-based."

Broadcasters took in a total $9.3 billion, up nearly 5% from last year, after most analysts expected a flat season.

Despite the expectations for Internet ad spending to hit double digits by 2011, according to a forecast released last month, current results aren't indicative of that. It could be due to Nielsen improving the TV advertising market by creating new TV ad ratings, called "Live-Plus-Three," which is now accepted as the standard.

The real question though, is when will the TV advertising bubble pop? It could be sooner than you think. Publishing 2.0 believes that once online video providers create industry standards similar to what Nielson has done for the TV industry, ad dollars will vanish from traditional markets like television as quick as you can click your mouse. Is this likely to happen? Stay tuned, so to speak.

I know, you're probably sick of hearing me wax rhapsodic about the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone. It's not going to stop anytime soon (at least, not for 105 days or so). Especially not today.

Because today, I was thrilled to see an email subject line from my buddies at Engadget: something about $300 and iPhone. Those two concepts were adjacent to one another, causing me unreasonable joy, and immediately I click-click-clicked away.

Sure enough, a big glossy photo of a leaked Cingular iPhone ad proclaimed that the 4GB version of the most-wanted mobile phone would be offered for $299 with a two-year wireless service contract, starting at $39.99 per month. I have Cingular and I've already called: I'm eligible for "upgrade" starting in March, so I'm definitely going to plead my case for the iPhone when said advertisement becomes reality.

Many critics of Apple's take-over-the-mobile-world strategy have said that consumers won't pay $499 for a new mobile phone. First, I think those critics are largely wrong (I keenly remember paying $495 for a Palm Pilot six or seven years ago, so there), and secondly: $299 is a lot more palatable. The rumor doesn't seem to have had much affect on Apple's stock (and maybe it's just not widely-spread enough, yet): it was down 38 cents, or about half a percent, to $84.83 for the day.

A robot working at General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) makes a mistake, gets fired and commits suicide. No, wait, the robot wakes up and realizes it was only having a bad dream. Not funny, says the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Like the Snickers male-on-male kissing ad that I blogged about Tuesday, the GM robot committing suicide ad is getting a lot of negative criticism. Unlike the Snickers ad, which was pulled by the Mars company after the negative feedback, General Motors says it has "no plans" to drop the spot and plans on airing it again during the Feb. 25 Academy Awards broadcast.

To me, the only thing worse than having an ad that is received so poorly is not having the good sense to pull it fast enough. GM likely spent over $2 million for the backlash they are facing now -- including former Energy secretary Donald Hodel saying that anyone who loses someone to suicide in the near future should consider suing GM. So why exactly would GM pay more to put this same ad on the Oscar stage?

Looking at this another way, I think this sort of thing is likely to drive down the price of advertising at the Super Bowl, which is often criticized as being a waste of money for larger, established corporations.