First we had TwittAd and now we also have Be A Magpie, the latest service which aims to help Twitter users make money.
Whereas TwittAd allowed advertisers to add a background to your Twitter account, Be A Magpie actually sends out advertisements as Tweets. The default is 5 regular tweets and then one advertisement but you can choose to have 20 tweets to 1 advertisement. If you are going to use the service I would encourage you to use that as it will annoy your followers much less.
Here is their basic explanation of how it works :
I assume the owners rushed to get this released as underneath the above image was this note, clearly they have’nt had the time to check that everything on the site is ok.
TODO: Draw a nice picture that shows how twitterers earn cash for their timeline and advertisers are going viral!
Should you use Be A Magpie?
I believe that anyone who uses this service will see a drop in subscribers. It’s not something I would use but I’m sure it will prove popular. Though it’s not without it’s critics. TechCrunch has labelled the site PayPerPost For Twitter and Robert Scoble believes those who use it should be banned from Twitter (At the moment Twitter do not have any rule which says you can’t use the service for advertisements).
What do you think of Be A Magpie, is this a service you would use?
Link : Be A Magpie
Magpie is a little more intrusive than Twittad. I don't think I would want to submit my followers to that. Not to mention it will appear as a personal recommendation and I would want to make sure I would actually approve of the things that go out on my Tweets instead of letting someone else do it.
In a nutshell, not just no but hell no. Why? Because I use Twitter as a means of interacting with other people, not peddling products and services. If I wanted to do that, I'd create a stupid click-through link-advertising MFA scheme site.
But in order to do that, I'd first have to sell my soul, and I'm not about to do that.
Interesting monetization models… However, I am not convinced if tweets have that 'read-me-now' kind of look n feel that people will be forced to read the ads. Most might not even read or care about them?
Magpie is the best way to kill your twitter account…
I'm not sure how successful this will be, but I don't see as a "pay per post" kind of scheme. I see it more like a company trying to be the adsense of the twittering world.
I agree with the sentiment that I would want some mechanism to approve or disapprove of ads being displayed. But as an advertiser I believe the conversions would be better by not having a "sponsored link" type of label.
If this were implemented that way, then it would be good both for the advertiser and the publisher. But as far as I can see it does not work that way.
Nope not me. If I want to advertise something, it would be a blog post, then tweeted.