Is Magpie a Good Way To Monetize Your Twitter Account?

November 24, 2008

Picture 2 Be-a-magpie is a way to “convert your tweets into bling-bling”. In other words, make money from your Twitter account. It first came across my radar because I was seeing tweets with the #magpie hashtag. When I checked it out, I was momentarily surprised but realized that it is inevitable.

In short, it works like this:

  1. Advertiser approaches Magpie to purchase advertising.
  2. Magpie matches the offer with Twitter users who are signed up to Twitter.
  3. Magpie tweets the ad out on your account in a ratio of 5 to 1, tweets to ads.
  4. You get paid.

Any businessperson can immediately see the theory behind Magpie. We know that social media and “going viral” are killer when it comes to promoting online. Twitter is huge and it makes sense (from the business standpoint) to use it to get out commercial messages. Just like PayPerPost and ReviewMe for blogs, Magpie has come in with a way to pay for tweets.

Makes sense from that standpoint. But, what about the end user standpoint? In many circles, PayPerPost and ReviewMe are fairly controversial. Personally, I don’t think so because it all comes down to maintaining your integrity and being transparent about it. Twitter, though, is a social medium. Do we want paid commercial messages streaming across our Twitter accounts? I don’t.

I wouldn’t use Magpie because I am concerned it would piss off my followers. Interestingly, Jeremiah Owyang concluded the same thing. He gave Magpie a test and then polled his followers. The majority of his followers reacted negatively. He also concluded that the service is just not ready.

Social Media Marketing Is Here To Stay

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying I think Magpie is taking an unethical approach. Magpie, or something like it, is absolutely inevitable for Twitter. But, for such a thing to work and become accepted, the following would need to be true:

  1. Ads would need to be clearly identified as ads.
  2. Ads would need to be relevant to the person’s Twitter account.
  3. The Twitter user would need to be absolutely transparent with his followers that he is using such a service.

The parallels to blogging are there. It is now commonplace to see commercial ads on blogs. Similarly, it is commonplace to see paid blog posts and there are rules in place to ensure transparency when this takes place. Once the ways to ensure this are put in place for Twitter, we’re GOING to see advertising like this on Twitter.

As I said, it is inevitable.

I don’t expect this kind of thing to start without controversy, though. For those who choose to use it, don’t be surprised if you lose some followers.

So, the question remains: Is Magpie a good way to monetize your Twitter account? You’ll need to make that decision for yourself. I’m not going to use it. I think you’ll gain more value out of Twitter by truly participating in the community as a human being. It is OK to tweet out your latest posts (I do) as long as you remain social. By doing that, you can monetize Twitter indirectly.

Building your network, in my view, is worth more than the few bucks you might make from Magpie.

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  • David - Good post!

    I'm with both you and @joywang on this: There needs to be a lot more thought given to how this will effect people before Magpie really takes off on Twitter.

    I've checked it out and it makes some great promises about the amount of money you can earn using the service. But personally I think the number of people who will unfollow as a result of this will severely dilute the potential earnings. The effect on an on-line reputation can be dramatic as well. As a mater of course I will immediately unfollow anyone who sends a Magpie tweet to my account. I don't need people I think I know and trust recommending things that they, quite obviously, are not recommending.

    There is a business model for monetising Twitter, I am sure of that. Magpie as it exists today is not it.

    If Magpie were to set up a subscription service where you could sign-up to receive the tweets in exchange for free Twitter access in future, I think that would be better. The difference is that you know who the tweets are coming from (and are therefore adverts) rather than from someone you know who has no knowledge of what's being sent under their name.

    Just my $.02 worth

    @Gaz4695
  • My answer to this is the same as for paid blog reviews... I don't do it because there's so little money in it. Why alienate your audience for chump change?

    Build and promote your own stuff. The audience doesn't mind as much because it's relevant (or you're doing it wrong). And the return is so much higher.
  • Got quick responses from Gary (above) and one other on Twitter saying using Magpie would result in an unfollow. No surprise there. And that goes right to the heart of what you said, Brian. In the end, making good money with these tools means marketing and selling your own product.
  • I don't have a problem with advertising, as long as the content I'm getting is worth it. With the rise of advertising in RSS feeds (Pheedo), there are certain feeds I have unsubscribed from because the annoyance of the ads was worse than what I was getting from the content. Conversely, there are some blogs I read that are worth wading through a few adverts.

    That said, I'm having trouble thinking of a scenario in which I would enjoy someone's "tweets" enough that I would agree to get interrupted by an advertisement in their feed. I'm not saying that I would make a blanket rule that I would "unfollow" anyone using Magpie, but that is more than likely the outcome.
  • Hi David. Nice Post. I just cheked the site after reading your post. No follow may be an issue like you said. However, social media marketing is place where you find ways to utilize the media for yourself and for providing good information to the public.

    I wrote several posts of various twitter features and apps in my site http://www.takeaplunge.com but missed this site. Thanks.
  • prasanna
    David good post.I am not much successful with magpie as of now.all it requires more followers to your profile.

    For great twitter tricks http://bit.ly/TlXWr

    Monetize your twitter profile http://bit.ly/g412m
  • Thanks for the insights, Magpie is a third party ad network which sells advertisers on a CPM basis... But in the oposit to Google you have to remember that tweets that go out to your followers coming with your name attached... So, yes you are definately loosing followers like craizy.
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