Many news sites have successfully harnessed Twitter to distribute their stories and build their audiences, after all, but they aren't making money from news tweets yet. Now, though, early exploration is emerging from Los Angeles to New York to Montreal.

Paid-tweet purveyor Ad.ly, the 4-month-old Los Angeles startup, has pitched its services for the most obvious approach, inserting paid tweets among news tweets. So far the big takers are individuals such as Ms. Kardashian, but Ad.ly says major publishers are coming to the table, too.

The New York Times isn't ready to try paid tweets, despite nearly 2.3 million followers for its main Twitter feed -- heady enough territory to ape Ms. Kardashian if it wanted to. "We're taking a bit of a wait-and-see approach on that one," said Denise Warren, senior VP-chief advertising officer at The New York Times Media Group. "We want to be sure that audiences really understand the difference between the paid tweet and the real tweet."

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