Twonetization (Twitter Monetization)

Of the many social networks that exist today, the one that arguably has been left the most untouched (from an advertiser perspective) is Twitter. Although the company has dabbled in inserting ads among multiple posts overseas, in the U.S. the entity has had little brand interaction outside of actual community managers taking on Twitter profiles and befriending folks who are willing to listen. See examples here.

Now a 3rd party startup based out of the UK "Be-a-magpie" has entered the scene and hopes to serve as a middleman in the quest for advertisers to buy their way into social media.

Essentially the system gives Twitter users the option to open their account to paid tweets. So for every 5 "organic" tweets, 1 will be inserted that promotes the initiative of advertiser X. The economics of the system at first glance don't seem favorable. One would assume that a person who has a valuable Twitter account, who then starts sending out advertising to his followers, would diminish that value as a result of people "unfollowing" them due to being annoyed or disenfranchised. This cyclical concept would grow worse and worse. As the Twitter user loses followers, the income they generate from their account would also go down and the incentive for them to participate in the program would diminish.

That being said, if advertisers are careful (with help from Magpie and HOPEFULLY their agency) some messages may be able to disguise themselves as legitimate tweets if they seem relevant to the twitter audience. Let's use the example of Amazon.com. As an advertiser, Amazon could push out two kinds of tweets:

Example A) "Amazon.com has all your book, music, and clothing needs covered! Come shop at the biggest store on Earth! December includes 10% off all classic rock albums."

Example B) "Just did some damage at Amazon, but my Depeche Mode Collection is now complete. They're having a sweet sale on music right now."

The first example is clearly an ad. The second is much more natural. And while people will still most likely be able to root out the bot generated messages, they might be less adverse to it if they see the advertisers are making it relevant to the interests of their network of Twitter users.

In terms of monetization, this is the not the first attempt made to bring an actual dollar value to one's twitter account. Social Media maven Robert Scoble put the rights to his twitter background and profile picture up on ebay but unfortunately the auction was removed. Per Mashable, the auction was up to above $500, not necessarily that outrageous given the Fast Company writer has a following of 37,000+. In this case, the brand interaction would be much less intrusive as users would not see ads in their twitter stream.

It goes without saying that this will certainly cause a polarizing debate within the Twitter community. A similar situation had/has occurred with bloggers and the introduction of vendors who promote Pay-Per-Post blogging as well as bloggers who agree to write favorable posts in exchange for free products. The next few months will be a critical test for companies like Be-A-Magpie to see if the Twitter economy will sustain their business model.

If anyone is interested in seeing performance of this new program. I have deposited 50 Euro into an account and will be tracking "my organic ads" over the next few days/weeks.

UPDATES ON PERFORMANCE SOON TO COME...