Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

Sell Premium Tweets With TwitPub – Say What?

April 15, 2009 | Internet News, Social Media

Picture 3 Anybody that uses Twitter knows that it is like a big river of information. The flow of the river is pretty substantial and that can lead to a lot of fluff. One company has developed a potential solution to this. They are launching today. It is called TwitPub.

TwitPub is a marketplace for “premium tweets”. As they put it in their press release:

Now, readers of Twitter can enjoy higher quality and more focused tweets in topics of their choice. Another reason to look forward to Premium Tweets is that it eliminates the level of randomness and ramblings factor from tweets. We know how Twitter can sometimes be a bucket of noise and be very hard to follow on topics that are truly consistent. With Premium Tweets, one can subscribe to professional authors or specific topics of interest. Imagine how this could be useful for content publishers in providing premium updates such as horoscopes, jokes, gossip, breaking news, insider scoops, feng shui tips, stock tips, private agency news, business authors, etc.

I think the idea is that you, as a publisher of premium tweets, can set up a private Twitter account. In order for people to be allowed to see and follow the private account, they have to pay for it via TwitPub. TwitPub will pay out 80% of revenue. You will be listed in their marketplace as a provider of quality tweets.

Will this fly? I have no idea. It is interesting. As they say in their FAQ:

We are a separate company developing interesting Web 2.0 business models.

Yeah, I’ll say.

My gut says that this flies in the face of the spirit of Twitter. Besides, if you don’t like the noise, just unfollow people. You’re in control all the time. I’m not seeing why I would pay to filter it out. That said, I’ll admit that I could be short-sighted. For some, the idea of getting an information stream which you select sent to your cell phone via Twitter might be worth it. So, perhaps there is a business model here. It looks like the publisher can set his/her price, but if you go for a Iphone-style pricing model of cheap pricing (say $1.00 per month for a premium tweet stream) and you’re able to get 1,000 followers, you’d be pocketing $800 per month.

So, what do you think? Is there potential to this business model?

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  • I'm with Doug on the handicapping horse racing premium Tweets. This would be very profitable for handicappers wanting to sell their picks or for handicappers looking for cheap picks. Could be beneficial both ways! Same for stocks and such.
  • I don't know what would prompt me to pay for an information filter. As you said, we're in charge of the flow. When too much buzz creates a buzz kill, I can always just unfollow.
  • I have no idea if it will work, but I like the ingenuity.

    I could picture it working very well for handicapping horse racing, stock picks, maybe horoscopes.
  • Interesting why Twitter haven't done this. I think it's a reasonable way of monetizing Twiiter but as long as it's not the average tweets that we see. If professional authors or content providers from respected media wants to offer "premium tweets", I guess it would be interesitng. It's a free market and if you don't like what you see, then you don't pay. But my instinct tells me that TwitPub probably figured that Twitter is going to be a very huge marketplace like blogging and email, and they took the first foot in to dominate the premium space of the Twitter marketplace.
  • Ryan Williams
    i think the idea behind twitpub is not to make my own personal twitter updates private and to charge people to read about my daily journals but more on capitalizing on content providers who already have a large collection of information finding ways to increase their revenue. i guess twitpub is looking at ways where people would purchase information that are of value to them and not some random information.
  • I think I can actually pick up plenty of followers with this. I've been posting trades and market action in real time and in some cases, followers made great money in minutes - including my last post on a cuba trade following obama's announcement (I'm not perfect of course and not every trade pans out, but it at least gives investors some ideas).

    Anyway, it's the system that's a bit laborious. When you go to twitpub, they have some huge banner to sign up for twitpub twits, which sends people to their twits instead of say, mine after clicking through. Also, once there, it's not obvious how to go about signing up. Finally, you have to use a credit card, no paypal it seems. And even worse, after clicking through on my banner, now you have to set up a new account. So, my link is lost and you have to find it again in the "Business and Investing" section. Terrible.

    If this were more streamlined, I think I'd be making decent cash immediately given the hundreds of current followers (at least a few month would have to sign up, right? for .99?).

    I realize it's beta, but they could have put a little more into a youtube video or more streamlined navigation.
  • Hmm. - I don't know quite what to think here. Forthe time being I'll watch them on Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitpuber
  • How do Tweeters merchandise themselves in the market? Do they have to pay to be listed? Who determines quality levels and what if samples are misrepresentations?

    A few bad purchases can lead to attrition of the platform all together - risking Twitter's usage numbers.

    I think every Tweeter inherently thinks their posts are premium and those that are truly providing value (market information etc.) tend to be branded content that need readership to support their advertising models - charging subscriptions may cripple their exposure no?

    I guess I haven't thought long and hard enough at who I would pay to read feeds from. To date there's so much self-promotion going on that it feels like I'd be paying for 140 character infomercials.
  • I don't know... my gut reaction is that it's ridiculous. Who knows? People have paid for much stupider things than this.

    But yeah... with the potential numbers of followers, you can charge even $0.25 a month, and if you can manage to get 4,000 followers, that's $800 net.

    It will definitely be worth keeping an eye on.
  • So this is basically a micro-membership site... Wow, I'll be watching with interest to see if it works!
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