140Char

So I’ve been using Magpie to serve advertising within my Twitter feed for one week now, and I thought it was a good time to post the results and reaction.

I started on November 28th, warning my followers that I was about to start testing the system, and immediately lost one follower, with about 4 of the 1598 warning me that they would either unfollow immediately, or consider dropping me if it became more than a test.

One week later, and my follower account is currently 1669 followers, partly as a result of my normal addition of interesting people which has also seen my following count raise by a similar amount.

Magpie offers the ability to set the ratio of advertising to normal messages, and I’ve stuck with the 5:1 default ratio as a starting point to see how much inventory was served - within 7 days, and with around 500+ tweets, Magpie has so far served three advertising messages, earning me a little over 10 Euros.

So far, since the initial response to the test I’ve not had a single message regarding the advertising place in my tweets, and I’m not aware of anyone responding unfavourably.

Reaction so far:

So far it’s seemed that Magpie’s inventory means the adverts being served are closer to the maximum 200:1 ratio than 5:1, which is probably a good thing - particular after the adverse reaction it generated on launch.

It’s made me think that perhaps rather than a tweet to ad ratio (As the number of tweets can vary enormously for any user per day), perhaps there should also be an adverts per day ratio, if the inventory being served increases. I do wonder how many potential advertisers were dissuaded by the outcry on Twitter, and whether the inventory will increase now that the dust has settled.

It also means that it will take 5 weeks for me to reach the minimum payout of 50 Euros at current rates - not terrible when compared to Google Adsense etc, and also not bad for something which wasn’t really monetised until now (I am also trialling Twittad to see if monetising Twitter profile backgrounds is realistic)

I’m definitely intending to keep the test going for a while longer to see what happens to advertising ratios, and to see if there is any more response to the presence of adverts in my Twitter feed (Also to see if the payout system works).

Incidentally, it’s also running on the 140char test account: @140char_com, which I’m going to be using more in the future to test services which may carry an element of risk to them, after the growing concerns that various 3rd party applications require both your Twitter username and password. This way I can identify which services are a real risk without running the chance of compromising my main personal account which I’ve built up over 18 months or so! With just 18 followers, the first ad paid just 0.02 Euros!

Let me know if you’ve been using the service, or your reaction to it, particularly if you’ve unfollowed me because of it!

I should have really put this in my last post, ‘Testing Magpie advertising within Tweets‘. If you want to see if anyone is using the service at the moment, check out a Twitter Search for #magpie.

And I have to feel sorry for the unfortunate Twitter user @magpie, who isn’t anything to do with the service (Their Twitter account is @beamagpie).

Oh, and if you happen to sign up, why not help fund www.140char.com for the futre by using this link? http://be-a-magpie.com/bkq4mw

And here’s a nice graph of what’s happening (should dynamically update from time of posting!)

There’s been quite a lot of discussion around the Magpie Network advertising service for Twitter, and whether it’s a good or bad thing. Such as ReadWriteWeb, Jeremiah Owyang, and Techcrunch.

I bet the Twitter team are looking at the responses with interest!

But James Cridland picked up on an incredibly effective and authentic Word of Mouth event on Twitter. I’ll summarise, so you can go and read the full article, ‘Word of Mouse - @stephenfry sells bucketloads of Tweetie‘. Hugely popular celebrity and ‘proper’ Tweeter Stephen Fry mentioned some Twitter clients, received a recommendation for a paid client for the iPhone, posted a positive review of it, and gained a huge number of responses from people who appear to have paid for the client on his recommendation.

Who would have though that an influential celebrity who is authentically using a service could have a direct effect on a product? I’m off to persuade U.S. basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal he should be promoting 140char!

Could the current financial situation force Twitter to start monetising microblogging with a newfound urgency?

Yes?

• Within the $20 million in VC funding, there is bound to be an element feeling a little twitchy at the moment.
• Would anyone buy a service for the valuations Twitter has had, without a working financial model?

No?

• $20 million can go a long way, if you’re careful!
• If Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg is being honest that the social network is concentrating on growth over revenue for three more years, then as the pre-eminent microblogging site, Twitter could follow a similar plan. The only flaw is that Facebook is already making money, just not as much as it could!

These are some initial thoughts, so it would be great to hear some opinions and ideas! Personally I think that we may see some of the smaller microblogging sites, perhaps Plurk for example, need to find revenue generation before Twitter, simply due to the lack of funding reserves. Twitter has the advantage of being able to sit back, and perhaps see some of the experimentation take place before acting.

Just caught up with two new applications making use of your Twitter data:

The first is a fun little thing called Tweet 3D. It’s a Tweet cloud - but in 3D! Not exactly about to start a revolution, but quite a pleasant and enjoyable way to display your most common tweet terms. You can check out mine here.

Meanwhile, there’s been some murmurs about What’s Your Tweet Worth?, which claims to value your Twitter account - presumably on the number of followers and posts. Unfortunately there are a few slight problems.

1. Apparently my valuation indicates I’ve made 200 updates. So underreporting by 4221 at the time of writing.

2. The site discloses that it’s sponsored by Twitads, which is good and honest - but in immediately suggesting people use the tool and then rush to Twitads to sell their profile backgrounds, it really rams home the fact that capitalism is coming to Twittersville.

3. There’s always been one major problem with any valuation service like this, whether it’s for blogs, microblogs, social networking profiles etc. The value of something is determined by what someone will pay for it - not by the number of contacts and links. They might provide the world’s roughest guide to possible popularity, but only in as much as an older antique might be worth more than a younger one, possibly, all other things being equal.

If I was buying a Twitter account or background, I wouldn’t look at the totals. I’d want to know who is following the account? What professions are they in? What demeorgraphic are they? Are they likely to be interested in my product? Are they likely to buy my product? Is the account posting quality content likely to have an impact on sales when I advertise on it? Etc.

And then I’d probably go and start my own account instead, for free, and connect with people that are really interested in what I’m offering.

For the record, my account is supposedly worth $44.32 per month. So, as it’s on Twittads as a test, let’s see if the valuation finds me the buyer I haven’t attracted so far!

There have been lots of reports on the Techcrunch50 startup conference/competition, and lots of coverage of Yammer winning the top prize.

It takes the Twitter model, and asks ‘What are you working on’ for enterprise, so a private Twitter for companies. It’s free to use for employees, but the business model kicks in if a company wants to claim their network and get administrative tools to remove messages and users, set password policies, or set IP ranges for who can use it.

So far so good - as always, I’m reserving my judgement until I get to sit and play with it - which I’m about to start doing for a fun little project. One of my main concerns is about the scale of take-up. A comparison between Facebook and Twitter shows microblogging is far from ubiquitous.

With this in mind, will there be enough scale within enough companies to make it worthwhile for companies, and also to show enough revenue to make sense? The natural audience is in the global technology companies, but beyond that, it might be somewhat limited as a mechanism for people with 6 employees signed up and the rest ignoring it.

It will also be intriguing to see how it works across departments, and particularly across verticals. Will people interact in a meaningful way if the management are seeing every message (Yam?). Will it lead to decisions becoming slowed by  Death by Committee as everyone seeks to put in their opinion?

For me, there are too many questions to predict whether it will be successful or not. Within a large UK organisation I’ve seen Facebook rocket in popularity for social use but fail to get traction for business use. Meanwhile LinkedIn has again grown, but as a tool for external contacts rather than questions and interaction. One company in one country isn’t exactly a representative survey, but even within the hardcore of early adopters who embrace social networking (and indeed microblogging), I’m not sure there’s enough conversation to necessitate Yammer over email/instant messaging/forums.

Still the $50,000 Techcrunch prize is more money than a lot of social networks have achieved, so they’re off to a good start!

I’m a big believer in trying out things you want to comment on. Especially if it could contribute to the hosting costs for 140char.com.

Therefore, you can now buy the background of my Twitter profile page for 7 days, for just $50 on Twittads, which I wrote about at length on ‘Is Twittads just a fad?’.

(For the record, I’m followed by 1245, and following 1254 - and just posted by 4071st update at the time of writing).

What I’m interested in is finding out whether anyone is willing to shell out $50 for anyone over the 1000 mark, or where exactly the price point evolves to, and I’m really interested in seeing which advertisers are signed up and using the service and what their method is for seeing a Return on Investment.

Will it convert me to thinking there’s a bright future for Twittad?

Back in June 2008, Ian Schaefer auctioned his Twitter profile page background for charity. Fast forward to September 2008, and there’s now a way for you to find advertisers willing to pay to display their commercial imagery on your page with Twittad.com. As their tagline says, ‘Let you ad meet Tweets’.

When I blogged about Ian Schaefer’s charity auction, I wondered if it was possible to judge interest in monetisation in this way by doing it for a good cause - something far more likely to lead to high bidding from charitable souls. Now, we can really see whether there is gold in them, thar, backgrounds.

My guess is that it’s unlikely to be sustainable as a business model, but I’m open to being convinced. My theory is based on three  things:

1. It’s going to be almost impossible for advertisers to work out the Return on Investment for placing an advert. Prices are set by users, and at the time of writing, the accounts with advertising booked range from $5 to $30, with a maximum of 351 followers. Assuming a company wants coverage (and at the moment the only ad I’ve seen is the one in their example, for Film Fitt), they’re going to want to know what effect it’s had. It can’t be from click-throughs or page views, because there is no way to measure it. The number of followers is inefficient, because there’s no guarantee any amount of followers will visit the profile page hosting the advertisement. And you could measure an increase above average for the Twitter feed of the company, but that’s fairly inaccurate and hard to pinpoint.

Edit: Twittad CEO James Eliason suggests some solutions on the company blog, including coupon codes, or using a new url to track activity (as when TV ads use .tv to show where the interest came from).

2. For users, it may frustrating that Twitter profiles with a significant following are effectively priced out of the market. If 300 followers can sell for $30, then it’s tempting to sell 1000 followers for $100. But prices vary wildly, from 7144 followers for $140, to $1399 followers for a whopping $1500! So it’ll take a while for the Twitad economy to settle down and establish what a realistic maximum price tends to be.

3. Are there enough advertisers to sustain this type of service? For most mainstream businesses, the concept of Twitter is still a novelty, or an incomprehensible piece of geekery. People like @Zappos and @Comcastcares are written about because their methods stand out. And companies using techniques like those mentioned aren’t likely to find the idea of going from engagement to broadcasting their ads via profiles appealing. Meanwhile the mainstream who are more likely to see broadcasting as easy and attractive are quite happy playing with Adsense, or possibly Facebook.

Having said all that, I’m completely impartial about whether or not Twittads is a success or not. There’s no escaping the fact that various individuals and companies will seek to monetise the time and effort that creating a network on any platform requires, and capitalise on the opportunities it presents. And there’s no moral or ethical reason why an inoffensive advert on a profile page should impair the internet experience for anyone. But it’ll be interesting to see whether Twittads succeeds as is, or evolves further.

If you’re interested, there’s a Twittad blog. I’m intrigued enough to see how much value my 1200 followers creates, so don’t be surprised if I post later pimping my own advert (Of course, you could always beat the rush and contact me first!). After all, you can’t comment on something properly without taking a close look…

It took me a couple of passes to get the value of Blip.fm as opposed to existing streaming radio online like last.fm. At first, for some reason, it wasn’t running properly and playing each track in turn for me, which didn’t help! But now it’s becoming a great way to discover new music recommended by my friends, even if I normally revert to streaming my last.fm library for longer periods. The two compliment each other is the same way as someone like John Peel complimented by record collection, but I couldn’t always make it through an entire show before some obscure German techno forced me to change radio station.

Blip.fm helps me find new music by effectively allowing users to Twitter with each song they choose, giving it some context, or publicly proclaiming their love for it etc. And I can aggregate these choices into my own list, give ‘props’ to other users for good choices, and filter the overall stream via my friends, just as I would with Twitter.

Where it might give a clue to revenue streams for microblogging is in offering the direct link to buy any track as an MP3 via Amazon. So if I like a particular track or artist, the opportunity to make a quick impulse purchase is always there - and it’s backed up by allowing me to listen to the track based on recommendations by my friends.

The only weakness is that not every track is available, and I need to be aware that I want to listen to this track offline, in my car, on an Ipod, at the time that I’m experiencing it…or be able to find it easily, and at the moment there’s no way to search my Playlist, or add individual songs to my Amazon wishlist.

But if what if this model was more widely applied - to offline magazines and books for example. And to products as well? One Twitter Affiliates scheme which wasn’t tied into a sole retailer, but operated as an aggregation service to allow me to recommend almost anything, and offer a direct link?

It’s probably the quickest and simplest method of monetising the Twitterati. And people can be persuaded to link their recommendations to returns for themselves or even for charity, as something like Squidoo shows.

It would be possible to test the theory if individuals listed book recommendations etc via existing Amazon etc affiliate accounts, but this may lead to confusion and disappointment if it isn’t flagged up as such before an unsuspecting user follows the link - but Twitter and the extra 20 characters could flag referral posts quickly and uniformly.

The only question for me is who tries it first - Twitter, or an enterprising external team? Anyone know a good developer?

It’s the weekend, so I’ve taken a bit of a break from the latest news - yes Twitter is still up and down like the Assyrian Empire, and Plurk is still getting a lot of buzz. See the graph below for blogs mentioning Plurk over the last 30 days:

But in the meantime, I’m adding to the blogroll (See right). We’ve also kicked off the first Plurk pack list we’re aware of, to compile a list of notable Plurkers by discipline, and we’ve started experimenting with listing any microbloggers looking for advertising/sponsorship, and companies looking for microbloggers to fund. So if you’re looking to get paid or sponsored for Twitter, Plurk, Seesmic, Pownce work, then why not list yourself…

Any other suggestions for items to add, or any offers from possible contributors, are always welcome. After all 140 char isn’t just a character limit - 140 contributors (characters!) could be one hell of a resource.

Well, a twitter account is worth $1002.01 if you’re Ian Schaefer, the CEO of Interactive Marketing agency Deep Focus, and the person currently auctioning a one-month sponsorship of his Twitter page and profile.

What you get for your cash is:

• Background image of your choice on Ian’s profile page, and the replacement of his profile photo with your image.
• Brand representation in 8-10 outbound ‘tweets’ per day.
• Coverage of the experience on his blog.

The money raised is going to charity, but possibly the most interesting part of the experiment is Ian’s motivation: “Someone’s got to figure out some kind of business model with Twitter. And I’d rather be part of the solution.”

It’s the same thinking which has seen Tweeple start selling individual posts, and hypothesizing about how Twitter can use the extra 20 characters for mobile (160 characters is the limit).

There’s still 18 hours left on the auction at the time of writing, so by tomorrow night we’ll see how much a Twitter account is worth. You can watch the ebay auction, here.

And, for the record, Ian’s got 495 followers, which leaves me wondering how much cash I could raise with my 600?