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’ve seen a bit of feedback about new Twitter advertising service Magpie, which places paid advertising in your messages on a user-defined ratio - e.g. you can choose anywhere between posting one normal message then an add will appear, up to posting 200 messages before the advert posts.

Advertising is flagged by #magpie or a custom message within each advertising tweet. And you can pre-approve adverts, or allow them to autopost.

I’ve currently got the radio set at 10 normal posts before an advert appears, as I’m a fairly frequent poster. I’ve also asked people in advance for their thoughts, and a couple of people have said they’ll unfollow anyone who even starts using Magpie, whereas the majority have either said they don’t really mind, or they’re fine if it’s just a test.

In all honesty, there’s going to be monetisation of Twitter at some point, and the most logical place for any type of advertising-based revenue is around either the content or search functionality, because those are the areas which get attention from users.

For all we know, some of the growing number of services could be approved by the Twitter team behind the scenes as a way to experiment without alienating any users!

There’s a few reasons for testing:

• I hate writing about things I haven’t tried for myself
• My Tweeting and 140char were both started with aims other than making money, but at the same time, I don’t really want to be running a blog that costs me money at the moment.
• Monetisation will happen for Twitter, and this is one viable method in terms of getting attention. So it’s worth investigating now to be able to provide an educated response if it’s adopted as an official monetisation method.

But in the meantime, here’s the figures for my test:

Magpie started: 28/11/2008. Current followers: 1579.

And if you’re going to sign up to test it or use it yourself, why not help out 140char by using our referral link? http://be-a-magpie.com/bkq4mw

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!

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!

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?

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?