140Char

The only thing that moves as fast as Twitter is the blog coverage of Twitter. So much that even a day away from blogging leads to a pile of content which, if it were in print, would be threatening to trap me in an avalanche of theories about monetisation…but on the bright side:

• A brilliant post by Rohit Bhargava included the following ‘5 Stages of Twitter Acceptance‘

5 stages of Twitter Acceptance by Rohit Bhargava

• Follower counts will go down as Twitter releases a change to remove deleted and suspended users. Just hope I’ve avoided too many suspended users considering I’d just reach 1925 followers in the charity race to 2000.
• Techcrunch has a write-up about a cool -looking service called Stattweets for sports fans to keep track of their teams. But seeing as it’s only U.S. sports teams, I’m ignoring it for the moment out of principle!
• Via Venturebeat, the news that two-month old StockTwits has closed a first round of venture funding.
• Mashable covers undeniably pretty but possibly pointless new microblogging platform Yonkly. It looks to have some nice features, but it’s running a paid model, and has the problem of trying to raise critical mass against Twitter. Noone mention Plurk…
• Speaking of Twitter, they’re hiring a product manager.
• And from one of the many places covering it, Marketing Pilgrim on the fact Twitter has joined Google Friend Connect – apparently they are also working on joining Facebook Friend Connect and Myspace’s ID solution.

And that’s before I consider the very real risk to my self-esteem of joining Twit or Fit? Or the fact I went to the very enjoyable Twinterval on Monday and didn’t grab any photos, although I did get to chat to a bunch of cool people that I knew, and some cool people that I met that evening.

When I wrote about my first week of using Magpie to monetise my Twitter account, I wondered if there was the inventory to even get close to the ratios of 5 posts to one advert.

The second week appears to be backing up this theory – since then I’ve had just a couple of advertising messages, raising my earnings up to the 17 Euro mark, despite leaving the ratio at 5:1. At this rate it will be quite a while before I reach the minimum payout of 50 Euros.

But as I said before, this is a good thing in some ways, as one or two adverts a day seems to be an amount that doesn’t offend – and perhaps the number of advertisers will increase after Twitter co-founder Biz Stone picked the service over monetisation alternative Twittad in an LA Times article.

“I think any kinds of projects that focus more on the Twitter updates are more compelling,” Stone said.

For the record, Twittad is claiming 1600 sign-ups, 170 advertisers, and I’ve just finished my first month of allowing them to serve adverts on my profile page. (Feel free to book me for another month right now!)

Interestingly Ev Williams has recently said the economic climate means Twitter will seek to monetise in Quarter 1 2009.

From Cnet: “The revenue plans aren’t just ads or sponsorships. “We want revenues to be product-based. Google built something that can really scale, and that’s our intention as well.”

Still, in the meantime if you want to try Magpie, why not use a link that also helps to fund 140char? Strangely the Twittad affiliate scheme seems to have a form error at the moment.

Forgive the round-up format, but sometimes there just isn’t enough time in the day!

• Al Gore is coming to Twitter (Mashable). Whether or not you want Al Gore microblogging, more prominent figures means more mainstream coverage and members. Which increases the reach and opportunities in microblogging, even as it might dilute some of the things that initially appealed.
• Twestival write-up (TechcrunchUK). Sadly, and despite some farily strong persuasion by one of the organisers, I couldn’t make Twestival, the London Twitter meet to be social for charity. But by all accounts it was a huge success (I will definitely make the next one). Mike Butcher’s write-up and comparison with another event the previous night highlights why it was so good. The Twitter account for the event appears to be dormant now, but I’m guessing the website might remain active for the possibility of another one.
• Social Actions + Twitter mash-up (Mashable). Are auto-tweets bearable if they’re in a good cause? Pick the cause which resonates with you from a drop down list, and the system will auto-tweet once a day on your behalf to all the postings on that cause.
• The U.S Senate can officially resume Tweeting: (Venturebeat).  A new protocol rule change means members of the U.S. Senate can now share with the public more easily via public websites, including microblogs. There are some rules about disclosure, and what data politicians can collect about users of their own websites.
• Executive Twittering: Blogging without the time suck: (Pistachio). Businessweek profiled 10 CEOs who Twitter, and Laura Fitton goes on to explain why it can be such a benefit.
• How did personal video eclipse entertainment video (Chris Brogan). Interesting piece looking at the rise of personal video, and related tools like Seesmic and 12seconds.tv

That should keep everyone going for a bit…