Twitter is finding its groove as a direct marketing tool for outside companies. Dell recently claimed it made almost $1 million in sales based purely on sales alerts delivered on the micro-blogging platform, CNET reports. The news makes sense coming from a company that cut its teeth building a business out of selling PCs directly to the public.

What's more interesting, however, is how Dell appears to have made a business case for Twitter well before anyone else. The venture capital-backed company has long dodged concerns about its lack of (or not yet announced) plan to make money. But here's a simple case of just that. Dell simply "tweeted" alerts about products that were on sale and generated almost $1 million in revenue. The results clearly build a use case for Twitter that many others are likely to follow.

The company said it was an experiment that quickly paid off -- almost 65 Twitter groups were formed in the last half of the year. Of course, the real test (and success) will come from companies that are careful not to turn Twitter's delivery vehicle into a spam machine instead of a well-honed marketing platform.