DISQUS

simoncrabb · 8 months ago

So this is basically a micro-membership site... Wow, I'll be watching with interest to see if it works!

Chris · 8 months ago

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.

SoniaC · 8 months ago

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.

Sharron Field · 8 months ago

Hmm. - I don't know quite what to think here. Forthe time being I'll watch them on Twitter: http://twitter.com/twitpuber

Darwin's Finance · 8 months ago

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.

Ryan Williams · 8 months ago

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.

Edison · 8 months ago

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.

Doug · 8 months ago

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.

Adam | Rodent Control Speciali · 8 months ago

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.

Mark · 5 months ago

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.