Had things gone perfectly to plan, Twitter would have launched geolocation support for developers today at the Twitter Conference in LA, but apparently there are still some bugs to be worked out. But while it's not quite ready for prime time, Ryan Sarver, Twitter's platform lead, had a few updates for attendees.

According to Sarver, Twitter will soon be able to store location data, such as latitude and longitude coordinates, on a per-tweet basis. For those concerned with privacy, location information will be opt-in only and will require a visit to the settings page (it won't be enabled by default). Somewhat surprisingly, users won't see the new feature on the Twitter website when geolocation goes live other than on the settings page.

Also on the privacy front, Twitter will scrub geo-data stored in tweets more than 14 days old, which Sarver says will avoid subpoenas about a user's location. Location data will be deleted outright from Twitter's database, and not just anonymized.

Sarver had plenty more to say on the microblogging service's geolocation update, which you can read here.

Just how popular is Twitter? By the end of the year, some 18 million U.S. adults will access the microblogging service on any platform every month. That's more than the population of Switzerland, Singapore, and Norway combined, and also a 200 percent increase over 2008 stats. By 2010, that number's expected to jump to 26 million, representing another 44 percent increase.

The numbers come courtesy of eMarketer, who notes that the final tally might be even higher due to users accessing Twitter not just through the service's website, but via text messages, mobile apps, and various desktop applications as well.

"Since our earlier Twitter user estimates were published in April of 2009, the number of Twitter.com visitors has risen sharply," said eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna. "In addition, research data shows healthy -- and growing -- percentages of U.S. Internet users adopting the popular microblogging platform. These two factors compelled us to upwardly revise our previous forecast.".

On the flip side, eMarketer says "large numbers" of users end up abandoning the service after a short stint, and yet others only Tweet their latest happenings on an infrequent basis.

Surprised by Twitter's explosive growth? Hit the jump and sound off. And if you want follow us on Twitter, you can do so here:

Will Smith
Maximum PC

It seems as though everyone uses Twitter these days, but outside of venture capital, the microblogging service isn't raking in the big bucks. So how does Twitter plan to pull in an income going forward? One way is by offering commercial accounts to businesses.

According to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, the company is in the beginning phase of rolling out commercial accounts with premium services like detailed analytics. The next phase may involve building business-oriented application programming interfaces (APIs), giving the site a commercial layer.

"Twitter will still be free for everybody and we'll still tell them to go crazy with it," Stone said in an interview. "But we've identified a selection of things that businesses say are helping to make them more profit."

The challenge for Twitter is in separating who uses the microbrogging service for personal use and who's using it professionally, and then charge them for it. That's where the idea of integrating features that people are willing to pay for comes in.

Stone also said he wouldn't rule out the idea of acquisitions for the two-year old company, saying it's "definitely possible."

Twitter has been one of the hottest topics in the past several years, being linked to everything from potential terrorists attacks to celebrity slugfests, and even an upcoming Twitter-based reality show. Turns out it's also pretty effective marketing tool capable of boosting sales by millions of dollars.

Try $3 million, to be exact, which is how much Dell said Twitter helped the OEM rake in from followers who clicked through its posts. Of those sales, Dell made $1 million in the past 6 months alone.

"We're going to watch it over time to make sure it's tracking at the right level," said Lionel Menchaca, Dell's chief blogger. "It is trending upward and that's what we're going to be looking at overall."

Compared to Dell's $12.3 billion revenue for Q1 of this year, $3 million in sales doesn't seem like much. But no matter how much the world's second largest PC maker brings in, it's tough to scoff at millions of dollars, especially for those from the outside looking in and wondering what Twitter can do for them.