Selling Ads on Your Twitter Background? You'll Love Magpie
While Twitter has been less than forthcoming on how they plan to monetize their service, there is no shortage of ideas from third parties on ways to get paid for spending time with Twitter. From pay-to-tweet to selling off the real estate on your Twitter background, there are any number of ways you could be making money off the service.
Now, there's another service that - much like RSS-based advertising - offers to pay you for advertisements that run in the midst of your tweet stream. Meet Magpie, an ad network for Twitter.
To make money off of Magpie, you give the service access to your account. And then, you earn cash when they tweet advertisements on your behalf.
"You allow us to twitter in your name. Thus, it's primarily your followers who'll see the magpie-tweets. We're targeting them, not you."
But how much money could you be earning? To test it, I ran a couple of user names through the Magpie estimator to see.
Personally, I stand to rake in an additional 55 Euros a month - roughly $70 US. Richard could earn more than three times that amount, 184 Euros. And Marshall could be reimbursed around 181 Euros a month.
But what about the heavily followed Twitter crowd? Kevin Rose, for example, could stand to make an extra $8,000 a month, Leo Laporte around $15,000 a month, and Barack Obama? A projected $64,000 a month. (Which, ironically, is more than he would make if he gets the job he's gunning for.)
Now, I'm what you would call an "avid" Twitter user. And I have to admit that I'm capable of tweeting useless drivel and alienating followers with the best of them. But there's something about the fact that I'm actually the one doing that inane tweeting that makes it slightly more palatable. I think.
Magpie changes all that. With Magpie, the annoying tweets could - ultimately - be beyond your control. In fact, this "ad in the tweet stream" concept is exactly what people fear Twitter will be doing with their tweet streams in the not too distant future - inserting advertising into conversations that heretofore have been wholly controlled by each user.
Magpie is promoting the service as a way to get into the tweet stream of "popular twitterers." One has to wonder, if those Twitter users - especially those who are already seeing value in their Twitter use - are going to be willing to trade their influence for cash.
I, for one, will keep posting annoying drivel on my own - for free.
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I do not think ads in the conversation is the way to monetize twitter.
It seems very counter intuitive; the value is in the authentic conversation not in the interruption of the conversation.
To me this idea does not embrace the true power of a technology like twitter, or laconica.
This idea is very much like the old media idea of inserting commercials into to television programs. This "seemed" to work for a while because there was no way for us to go around the interruption; now there are many ways and the old model of interrupting conversations had fallen.
At http://adelph.us we are trying to do some different things with micro blogging. We think that the revenue model is more about embracing he conversations in the community
At http://adelph.us we are trying to do some different things with micro blogging. We think that the revenue model is more about embracing the conversations in the community
Very interesting indeed. It will be interesting to see how people react after getting ads in between conversation.
I never thought of it this way. Very interesting. Thanks :D
Aah, they eventually find the solution. I think this a great model, since twitter lives on the discussions made by others, they finance themselves and their community... This is really good and sane.
You know what this would be good for? Embedding your twitter stream into a website is easy, if you embed a value-added twitter stream from Magpie to your website, you've just turned twitter into an online advertising service. Unfortunately, the system doesn't work with website hits, only followers. Still, if it did, talk about an easy way to monetize a website. Too bad they can't do it with some other mechanic.
Some of the commenters seemed to have missed the point. If Twitter decided to do this, we might grumble, but ultimately, they provide a service which heretofor we Twitter users have been happily leeching. If they want to make some money, that's their perogative.
But this is totally something different: allowing individual users to monetize their Twitter accounts. I mostly follow friends on Twitter, but I do follow some of the influential movers and shakers in the community as well. I follow them for their insights and experience, not ads. The first time I see one of the ads come through, I'm just dumping that person from my list.
This service injects 'advertisements' into your tweets which is a sure fire way to kill your following. You're likely cultivating relationships on Twitter to build your messaging strategy (see: http://is.gd/5l1H), why blow it by spamming your friends with an 'Ad'?
I challenge you to use their service and Twak the spike in your dropped friends/followers:
http://twitter.com/SIGEPJEDI/status/983790963
A step in the direction of monetizing Twitter, but how many people actually go to another persons homepage? Even if they don't of course people would still spend the money to advertise on company's and a-list people' page. So it could bring in money, but I don't think the type they are looking at.
Craig
www.budgetpulse.com
I understand that Twitter needs to monetize their service somehow, advertising seems pretty unavoidable. In terms of personal monetization I'm sure there would be repercussions to adopters of in stream ads. I'm sure it would result in a lot of people on the fence dropping the service. There are a lot competing services and a migration to open source services would probably be significant.
Wouldn't a pro-level Twitter account be a better option? Perhaps integrate stats or give people 160 characters? maybe give people a gold star or something? I don't know, I'm just saying...
For monetizing the background they can use www.adcamo.com (this company has the technology).
Interesting concept. Has potential but noticed that they will send an ad message every 5 tweets. WTF, that is too often!
The really sad thing is that Twitter itself isn't thinking of this stuff.
This wouldn't be a bad idea.
http://twitter.com/stickychicken
If you're not in the know, Twitter is a microblogging service that makes it easy to keep up with your favorite people (hopefully us) on multiple networks and devices.
Follow us on Twitter !!
Good and sane?!
I agree with Chris Pratt: "The first time I see one of the ads come through, I'm just dumping that person from my list."
It's going to be difficult to make money off your tweets if your follower count drops like a lead weight.
Ugh.
I don’t understand why some people are criticizing it. I thinks its a great product as far as
1)Ads/tweets are contextual.
2)Frequency is not ver y high, I consider 5tweets/1 add to be an optimum, non-annoying frequency.
Advertisements in amongst tweets is a turn off.
This gives me an idea for a new Twitter related website. Magpie Nofollow. It would help you find all the members that you follow that use Magpie. Then you can easily delete them.
Magpie's earnings estimate is couched in "up to x euros" language - which is worth remembering. Your number of followers will drop almost inevitably and immediately, unless you plan to ramp up the quality and appeal of your tweets. That cuts into your earnings pretty quickly.
And @Supreet, wow - you have a much higher tolerance for advertising than I do, especially advertising that looks at first glance like a friend's update.
Posted by: robcottingham.wordpress.com
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November 2, 2008 1:37 PM
I have also written briefly about Twitter and Magpie. I will give people one warning and the second magpie tweet gets them blocked
I didn't even give them a warning, but did DM saying if you remove the service let me know and I will refollow. Sadly one of the two who I have unfollowed so far was an interesting viral marketing person that up to then had been making great tweets. He started actively promoting Magpie, encouraging his followers to join in, he lost all credibility in my eyes in just a couple of hours!
I agree with what sounds like the majority (thankfully) that Magpie is not the right direction for advertising on Twitter.
Magpie Tries To Make Twitter An Ad Network, Fails
It's annoying, it's basically spam, and it's compensating users that are merely using the service, rather than the service itself which must pay for bandwidth, development, support, etc., and actually needs the advertising revenue.
Their estimator says that I could earn about $500 with it. Granted I would view 1 ad per 5 tweets to be excessive and would likely make it every 10 or 20. Then the revenue of course would likely not be nearly enough to even bother with it.
Magpie doesn't factor in the other relevent factors like where your twitter feed is also posted and how many people read it there.
Interesting idea - but i don't think its quit there yet.
I am inclined to think if I adopted Magpie I would be hunted down by Twitter "Followers" and fed to angry raccoons. The Ultimate Unfollow.
Interesting concept tho, perhaps some folks wouldn't mind selling out that way.
Yes, can the model make money but will it last? I don't think so - you'll be exploiting your audience/community...I've stopped following news sites that insert ads in their tweets for this reason. @elaineschoch
very interesting read, thanks!.