We’ve all been scratching our heads for months if not years about how Twitter, the viral Internet superpower, would make itself into a proper online business as opposed to just a social network pioneer (which is no small feat in itself).

Acording to an article in the NYTimes, the time has finally come for Twitter to enter the eCommerce fold. The company announced a program for time-sensitive deals on products and events called @earlybird Exclusive Offers, on the @earlybird Twitter account which people can “follow” to get deals.

Like private and limited-time sale sites such as Woot, which was recently purchashed by Amazon.com, products will be categorized and availabled for specific times periods at deep discounts. Retailers will determine each items price and availability and Twitter will earn money from their sales.

A few weeks ago we read on Drop Ship Access that there could be potential for a program called Pay With a Tweet – which would mean that users would pay for products by retweeting them, sort of. The program hasn’t gone live yet, but users can buy the ebook on it for the price of a tweet.

After all of this talk, it appears that Twitter really has taken the leap from social to commerce, proving just how important a social network and community is these days.