Twitter's IPO is going to be killer.

Looking at the latest data on social media advertising – the stuff at the core of Twitter's business model – the company is in a great position to rake in the dollars over the next several years. That's good news for anyone who buys stock in the company after it goes public, which could happen any day now.

But as Twitter reaches for those ad dollars, it could also kill the party for the people who use Twitter – people like you and me.

Worldwide ad spending on social networks grew by more than one-third last year and is on track to grow at an even greater rate this year, according to digital marketing research firm eMarketer. The social network seeing the greatest growth by far: Twitter.

But once it goes public, Twitter will have no choice but to strive to maximize shareholder returns, which would appear to create a Catch-22. More ads on Twitter means more money for Twitter, which makes shareholders happy. But more ads on Twitter will make users less happy, which means fewer users. Fewer users mean lower ad rates, which makes shareholders unhappy – a vicious cycle.

No doubt the company will work to strike the right balance between those two worlds. But history has shown us that Twitter hasn't been afraid to undermine the wants and needs of core users in pursuit of its business strategy even as a private company.

Advertising on Twitter more than doubled in 2012, and it's set to double again this year to more than $582 million, eMarketer says. While advertisers spend far more on Facebook, those dollars aren't increasing at anywhere near the same rate. And as eMarketer vice president Clark Fredricksen points out, Twitter may have much more room to grow.

While Twitter's 200 million users seem paltry compared to Facebook's 1.15 billion, the flip-side is that Twitter likely hasn't come as close to the saturation point as its larger rival. In other words, advertisers have good reason to expect a rapidly expanding audience of Twitter users that will, yes, see their ads.

Image: eMarketer

But alienating users is definitely a worry, says Fredricksen, especially as social networking companies work to court advertisers with ever-refined analytics for targeting the right audiences at the right times. As ad-targeting algorithms become more precise, the process also becomes increasingly automated.

"The complexity that's going into improving ad targeting and ultimately monetizing these platforms is significant. That does sometimes mean increased ad impressions," Fredricksen says. "While all that's going on, Twitter and other platforms have to make sure they don't annoy users to the point of abandonment."

Though Facebook hasn't seen anything resembling an exodus, users have been treated to the intermittent annoyance of the company using their news feeds to work the kinks out of its post-IPO business strategy. Facebook shares tanked post-IPO in large part due to concerns over whether the company could figure out how to make mobile pay.

For now, Facebook seems to have solved that problem to investors' satisfaction. Its shares have closed at record highs this week, suggesting the time couldn't be better for Twitter to go public and ride the wave of Wall Street confidence in social media (also see LinkedIn, which is itself seeing its shares rise to new heights). And unlike Facebook after its IPO, Twitter's promoted accounts, tweets, and trends suggest a company that already has a solid mobile ad strategy in place.

Image: eMarketer

But Twitter's skill at mobile advertising could also make it a victim of its own success. As mobile ads rake in money, shareholders want more. And Twitter may have a tough time explaining to those investors why it needs to curb the flow from that firehose of revenue.

Last week, Twitter announced its purchase of ad tech startup MoPub, which makes software that allows advertisers to bid on social network mobile ad slots in real time. MoPub vice president Kevin Weil told Ad Age that Twitter did not plan to show more ads to meet more demand from advertisers: "There are no plans to change any of our quality thresholds."

Such reassurances may offer some comfort to users. But will Twitter be able to stick to its core values under Wall Street's incessant scrutiny? Twitter's idealistic reputation is well known. But the pressure to turn the dials up on advertising will be great once Twitter shares begin to trade publicly.

Last year, Twitter's move to throttle its API – which effectively killed many third-party apps that helped build the social network's audience in the first place – showed the company was willing to alienate some of its most impassioned users to consolidate control. If Twitter went that far while still private, imagine what it might do under pressure of quarterly earnings reports.

At the same time, even Wall Street gets that Twitter can't send users fleeing and still stay solvent. It's just that by going public, Twitter will be adding another variable to its revenue versus user experience equation. As a private company, Twitter has to balance the demands of making money versus the demands of users who don't want their streams overrun by promoted tweets.

Once Twitter goes public, the company will have to account for the sentiments of shareholders, who may have a far different idea about how many ads users can take. Given so many masters, the trick for Twitter will be figuring out how to push users to their limit without pushing them over the edge.