ExecuTweets sees the C-level side of Twitter

Twitter-populated and Microsoft-sponsored, ExecTweets may be the first step on the path toward -- depending on your point of view -- a revenue stream for the microblogging model or a sign that the service is selling out. That's the conversation inside the Twitterati beltway; most of the rest of the world, on the other hand, will probably just be amazed to hear that actual C-level execs tweet.

Yes -- 77 of them so far, according to the list on ExecTweet's About page. According to that page, ExecTweets "empowers the community to surface the most insightful, business-related tweets," though one may well ask how Guy Kawasaki's tweet Monday that "Cassettes Are Cool Again: Jimi Hendrix Tape Portrait" fits into that vision.

In any case, execs can be added by nomination (and removed by their own request), and the resulting feeds are sorted by industry -- government, healthcare, media and advertising, retail, technology (including Twitterers from Microsoft, Craigslist, Sun, Digg, Creative Commons, Cisco, AMD, and eBay), home, and "other," which includes former AOL head Steve Case. The application itself draws on Twitter's API; it'll be interesting to see how that notoriously cranky entity will behave if ExecTweet becomes as big as some of its featured businessfolk.