And yes, that sounds even more indulgent and navel-gazing than most media about media. There’s a logic here, though: Twitter is great because it’s immediate and unfiltered (when it’s working). But there’s a value in a service that pauses and sifts, too.

In this case, that work is done by Steve McGookin, a veteran of the Financial Times (and Forbes, for a minute or two, where I worked with him), who sorts through journalists’ tweets and lets you know what they’re talking about and what they’re saying.

Straightforward stuff, but it’s something that isn’t being done yet. Most aggregators either rely on crowdsourcing/algorithms to cull stories, which is interesting but crude, or they don’t do any sorting at all. And because McGookin is doing actual editorial work, via super-concise summaries, it’s much more useful than the “bunch of tweets = a newspaper” model that paper.li is pushing. (No annoying spam, either.)

Muck Rack Daily is a spinoff of Muckrack, one of the umpteenth Twitter-related sites generated by the guys at Sawhorse Media. Sawhorse co-founder Gregory Galant says the main Muckrack site, which simply tracks individual journalists’ Twitter acccounts, is generating 100,000 uniques a month. But this new site may ultimately be much more useful, and popular.

That’s a pretty significant change for the company, which has previously allowed anyone to do just about anything with its data, without asking for a cent.

But that’s over, based on the new terms of service the company released today. The relevant excerpt:

In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the advertising sale, we require you to compensate us (recoupable against any fees payable to Twitter for data licensing).

That’s potentially a big deal. It’s also quite vague. And after talking to Twitter COO Dick Costolo this afternoon, I’m pretty sure that vagueness is intentional. Because I’m not sure Twitter knows exactly how it wants to proceed.

But I did extract some specifics from Costolo:

• Twitter is only focused on sites and services that sell ads against its stream. So if your service doesn’t generate revenue, or does so using something other than ads (i.e., subscriptions, analytics packages, etc.), you’re fine.
• If you do have to pay up, there are a couple of different ways to do it: You could cut Twitter in via a revenue split or agree to license its data stream, which has generally been free up until now. Or you could agree to use Twitter’s own “Promoted Tweets” ad service. Or some combination of the above.
• Costolo says the company hasn’t established a minimum fee, revenue split or another metric for payments. So a lot of this is going to get hammered out case by case.

Okay. But who, exactly, is going to have to pay up? Twitter’s terms aren’t clear, and while I went around and around with Costolo about this over the phone, I’m still not sure. Because I don’t think Twitter is sure.

Start with the easy stuff: If there’s nothing else in your service beyond tweets and you’re selling ads against those tweets, you could be paying.

“When we’re talking about cases where Twitter is clearly a key component of how a page is monetized, we need to have a commercial relationship,” Costolo said.

That sure sounds like TweetUp, the new “AdSense for Tweets” product that launched today, despite what CEO Bill Gross told me this morning. And it doesn’t sound like Muck Rack, a Twitter aggregation site owned by Sawhorse Media–because there aren’t any ads on Muck Rack. But if owner Greg Galant decided to start running Google (GOOG) AdSense ads on his pages, he might end up paying.

Except that Twitter says it’s not looking to find all the developers and publishers out there selling ads against the Twitter stream and tax them. Size matters, for one thing.

“We’re not trying to prevent people from building businesses,” says Tony Wang, a Twitter business development executive who joined my call with Costolo today. “We’re saying if there’s this thing you’re doing, and you’re selling ads against it, and it’s really big, we want to participate in that.”

So is Twitter only interested in really big publishers who use Twitter? Not necessarily. I asked Costolo about the Huffington Post, which has prominently embraced Twitter and uses it frequently to fill out its pages. Like this Twitter widget under a grisly story about a gored bullfighter (careful!).

That’s probably fine, Costolo said. But what about Huffpo’s “Twitter editions,” which are primarily made up of tweets? I’ve asked Costolo about those in a follow-up email, but haven’t heard back yet. My gut: He’s not sure yet. Which is going to make for lots of interesting conversations in the coming weeks and months.

UPDATE: Here’s Costolo’s response, via e-mail, on the Huffpo question. Not surprisingly, he heaps praise on a big Web site that helps Twitter increase its distribution. Though note he does mention plans to “monetize…together”:

HuffPo’s Twitter Edition pages are an awesome example of why those guys are one of our most innovative partners. We actively support and encourage those efforts, and look forward to working with them to monetize these opportunities together. In fact, I think they will play an important role in helping define smart approaches to advertising around Twitter-driven content.

It’s reasonable enough for Twitter to start trying to make money via companies that are making money via Twitter–it’s a move many outsiders have been calling for the company to make for some time. But it wouldn’t be Twitter if this was a straightforward process. Get ready for a bumpy ride.

UPDATE 2: After a day of discussion, Twitter has tweaked its language in its terms of service, swapping out  “In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the advertising sale” with “In cases where Twitter content is the primary basis of the advertising sale”.

What does that mean? Here’s Costolo, via email: “The policy remains the same — if Twitter content is the primary basis of the advertising sale, we require a commercial relationship. It’s important to note that just because there is Twitter content on a site, for example a Twitter widget, that does not mean we will require a commercial relationship. We encourage folks to find innovative ways to display Twitter content, and we aren’t interested in tracking down each and every implementation in order to be compensated.”

Here’s

Most obvious example: CNN’s decision to cede much of its airtime to a stunt involving Larry King and Ashton Kutcher, who are having some kind of follower contest, which you can read about somewhere else.

But no need to single out the Time Warner (TWX) unit–every big news outlet now features stories about Twitter, presented by anchors/reporters who use Twitter. Which makes sense, because while Twitter may not be for everyone, it definitely appeals to professional self-promoters. [UPDATE: Add Oprah Winfrey to the ranks.]

If you tried to put a price tag on that kind of coverage… well, it’d be very expensive. Just advertising a Web service on TV doesn’t ensure success–ask IAC’s (IACI) Ask.com (or Pets.com, for that matter). But it can certainly get people to sample the service. So that’s some of what’s going on here.

Meanwhile, if you want to see the press embrace Twitter in real-time, there’s now a service that will let you do just that. Meet Muck Rack, which does nothing but aggregate Tweets from media members (um, like me).

The site comes to us from Sawhorse Media, a Brooklyn company that is trying to make a business out of Twitter-related sites and stunts–they’re the dudes who brought us the Shorty Awards earlier this year, as well as Musebin, a collection of Twitter-sized music reviews.

Sawhorse CEO Greg Galant tells me this one took a week to build, which is good, because the conceit is wafer-thin.

But it’s also a pretty good one–like the late, lamented “March Tweetness” promotion, there’s definitely something to sorting and curating the flood of Tweets. I also like the fact that Muck Rack offers a “links” view  that highlights the full headline of stories that media folks inevitably promote via their Tweets. Very helpful. You could definitely extract a few ad dollars out of this one, if you were so inclined.

Or you could just use it as an excuse to write about Twitter, again.