“Does http://be-a-magpie.com bug you? If I were @ev I would block this ad network from Twitter. Discuss:”
November 23 at 7:53 pm
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Katie Heikkinen, Shivanand Velmurugan, Mrinal Desai and 31 other people liked this
Twitter should make sure it is only one to build systemic monetization schemes on its service. But either way I don't like it when people "Amway" their friends. - Robert Scoble
http://twitter.com/willhiggins... - Will Higgins
That's pretty rude towards Amway, RS! So, tell Twitter to start monetizing already. - jamesdkirk
I haven't seen it in action yet and don't want to try it in fear that I will loose all my followers. - Sweyn
I'm not a fan. and they will get unfollowed if I see it in my stream - Erin Kotecki Vest
should we not let the twitter market work it out? Is there a major difference between twitter ads and ads on a blog? - jason keath
Does it violate their terms of service or something? I don't see how they can block it if not. Sure, it's annoying, and if I start seeing folks I follow using it heavily, I'll probably stop following. - Ken Sheppardson
Wow, I was going to blog about this in a few days. I think Twitter might want to block magpie and instead do this themselves! - AJ Kohn
Social Media is about sharing interesting things with people who find those things interesting, not about soapboxing crap and spamming others with random junk. Magpie is a service that doesn't understand that, and though it attempts (poorly) at doing some level of justice to spamming, it's still spam/ads and unwelcomed in my book. - Enrique Gutierrez
James: I was in Amway for a while. They totally try to get you to sell stuff to your friends. The comparison is very apt. - Robert Scoble
or they could let it run in a test phase, see if it works and then buy it like they did with summize...I'm still debating how I think Twitter should be monetized, but working for Google on the AdWords product I have some opinions :) - Derek Coatney
should Twitter create it's "magpie" rather than let magpie run riot? - Jansen Lu
I suspect this is happening already Robert. Everyone is gaming the system. - Mark Taylor
No, that was the training organization you belonged to. I was in for a while too. Amway products ARE top notch. And we all make recommendations ALL THE TIME to our friends. Plus you and I and others with online presence put ads on their blogs/sites/feeds. Is it any different? I don't really think so. - jamesdkirk
A while back I made a post that concluded that twitter is good for exactly one spam (http://seanreiser.com/node/342) because you can drop anyone who uses their influence to start spamming. (And, yes I think magpie tweets are spam). I dont know if twitter should block it, but I will avoid folks using it. - Sean Reiser
It's close to what we have planned, but we think we have a better offering. Magpie bugs people, but I'd like to think http://twitAD.com won't. ;) - mediafill
(warning, I talk about my company in this comment) - I believe our company has a better option (www.zenect.com). Instead of having full SMS ads come from you to all your followers, our ad network inserts 40 character (or less) tagline ads at the end of messages. We don't integrate with Twitter at this time but instead offer a full micro-blog + mobile ad network. And I agree with Jason that the market will determine whether Magpie is viable and popular. If people like it, more power to them. - Doug
I've offered up this for @ev and my fellow tweeters: http://bit.ly/3PZ56Y #tweetrocket - Jason Kintzler
I've heard about this service... But seriously, Twitter is becoming infested with spammers with ads/marketing bullcrap. It needs to come back and be the good' old Twitter that used to be! - Alain Edouard
Amway, er, Quixtar's products are fine. The marketing and distribution scheme is sleazy. - Robert Scoble
agree wholheartedly, Robert. Twitter is largely not a place for this type of marketing. I do not want ads in my Tweetstream. - Stephen Collins
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Robert, I'd love to tell you about OXY FRESH!!!!! KIDDING! But srsly, an Aunt of mine got sucked in to Oxy Fresh, another MLM scheme I think :) - Richard Walker
Nice intro, Doug ;) - jamesdkirk
yep, it sure does. Especially when those that I tend to click on their links more often have it enabled. Clicking on ads rather than a genuine recommendation from them is going against the grain of whay makes Twitter, friendfeed... all the SM tools useful. - Wendy Peters
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OK, I'll fess up. I've set up Magpie here. I've had it running about two weeks. I've had just one comment about it, and that wasn't really adversarial, and one person ask what it was, and they wanted to join. I've checked and it's sent out just 3 tweets since Friday, so not excessive. I'm monitoring it closely though, and if I got major objections, and/or lots of unfollows I'd review my participation. - Ian May
I'm not advocating one distribution system over another, but I find it interesting that a fellow who makes his living telling us all about the "latest thing" in order to inform us and let us know why we should like a service would compare this service with one that at base levels just uses social interaction to distribute its products - jamesdkirk
to those using magpie and claiming no negative vocal response I ask, have you monitored your unfollows? I know a lot of people will simply just unfollow you without saying anything, it's what I do. - Chris Pugh
but still, doesn't it all come down to "unfollowing" if you don't like what I'm sending in my stream? (presuming I was using this service?) Let's not forget that, folks! - jamesdkirk
I say "more power to them!" If people like what they do, it will succeed. If they don't, the people who sell their tweets will find they have no audience. Advertising runs our media-centric economy. As long as the market is free to opt out by unfollowing, Twitter will become what its users want it to be. - Kenneth LeFebvre
http://useqwitter.com will help out there CP. - jamesdkirk
dunno, Robert -- be-a-magpie says "scobelizer" is worth up to €22,816.42 per month. (presumably emphasis on the "up to") though one wonders if having your tweets BOOT CUT JEANS NOW ON SALE AT THE GAP constantly interrupted by BEN & JERRY'S VANILLA, NOW IN ORGANIC advertising will just make them TRY THE POPCORN SHRIMP PLATTER AT RED LOBSTER annoying. - Karim
@jamesdkirk that's exactly it ... the service pays by follower count, so the self defeating fact is simple. use magpie, get unfollowed, lose all your followers, stop using the service, start rebuilding your twitter network ... repeat? sounds stupid to me - Enrique Gutierrez
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@Chris I've had a few people unfollow me, and a few more follow me since I've started using it. I haven't noticed a sudden increase in unfollows, just normal turnover, when folks realize that they don't find my inane drivel very interesting after all... - Ian May
I'd do this if I were Twitter since they could insert ads at an appropriate rate for each users (based on tweets/hour) and type (based on keyword filtering). Only Twitter would be best at ensuring the ad load wasn't too high. And face it folks, they have to make money someway. It's this, subscriptions or banner ad mania. - AJ Kohn
@Scobleizer None of the people I follow use it. I threatened to un-follow if anyone signed up ;-) - Joseph McLaughlin
Perhaps a service like magpie could work out a deal with Twitter of some kind? - Ian May
I'd agree with AJ Kohn. I like the service they provide, and would deal with "tasteful" insertions. It or something similar will happen. And it WILL HAPPEN here on FF before long as well. Wait and see. - jamesdkirk
one more thing - If I want to be advertised at - I'll follow one or all of the spam bots that follow me. heh - Enrique Gutierrez
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If you are using magpie, your SNR inverts. It needs serious tweaking. Here's @geekmommy's post/discussion on #magpie: http://twurl.nl/ajtuf5 - Zena Weist
Is there an ad network where I can be paid to *refrain* from saying how much certain products suck? heh. - Karim
*thinking out loud* Could this be why Bezos invested ... does he see a massive new affiliate network via tweets? - AJ Kohn
it doesnt affect me as I have yet to see it in use. it seems everyone is looking out for retaining their 'Tribe' rather than making a quick nickel at their expense. . - timduke
One of my Twitter friends says he's unfollowed two people already after seeing their Magpie ads. - Michael
I have no problem with this. Twitter is victimless: if you don't like seeing #magpie tweets, unsubscribe the sender. Very simple. If I were Twitter, though, I'd boot be-a-magpie as a revenue competitor. - Chris Baskind
I think the difference between bloggers having ads on their blogs & using magpie is that an ad on a blog page is passive. Readers can choose to read them or not. It doesn't generate a text message or chirp or enter any life stream or feed. Personally, I think services like magpie somewhat "sully the stream" and make it less organic; more disingenuous. [disclosure - I am blogger w/ads in my sidebar - but don't use twitter to spam my readers/followers] - faryl
I also think it's a trust & etiquette issue. If I were John Chow (no offense to John) my readers might expect that - I'd be practicing what I preach. But as someone whose blog is about using social media to connect in positive ways, I don't know that it would be appropriate. Bottom line, if I have to think about "would this be ok to do", I probably should opt NOT do it. Maybe as twitter evolves and there are more filtering tools out there. But not now. I agree with geekmommy's post (thanks @Zena Weist) - faryl
Robert, I see this slightly different than Amway. With Amway you're directly approaching friends, which would be the equivalent of "DM"'ing all your friends a magpie. With this, you're simply putting an ad up above your house for all your friends to choose to look at or not. - Jesse Stay
this service caused us to write the only bad review to date - of over 100 reviews on Sociosophy.com --- http://www.sociosophy.com/blog... - Sociosophy Reviews
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Not one person has complained about my magpie tweets to me. Maybe I'm not worth the time? - bill giltner
Wow, I touched a nerve here. Will write a blog about my thoughts. Be back later. - Robert Scoble
@bill giltner - do you use qwitter? after people become aware of what this service does, that might be something to consider using. - Sociosophy Reviews
Sociosophy, Bill, SocialToo does what Qwitter does too - tracks both people that followed and unfollowed you and sends in a batch daily. - Jesse Stay
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yes it does, well at least my experience with socialtoo has shown that as I received an email today telling me who followed and who unfollowed. - Ray Marr
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@jesse_stay thanks for the tip! we'll have a look soon - Sociosophy Reviews
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Personally, I don't mind it. It makes Twitter into a real business tool. - Daniel Brusilovsky
Sociosophy I have to disclose my bias - I am the developer of SocialToo, so if it gives you any troubles let me know. - Jesse Stay
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We should be able to handpick ads we want to share with our friends, that's the most natural way to do it. - TunisianGuy
Social Media is not about having ads shoved at you without permission. If I see magpie in my stream, I will unfollow - Sylvia Webb
Personally I do not find it too obtrusive or annoying - that said I wish Twitter were doing it themselves because then I'd mind less. - Nation Hahn
in a related question... how do you feel about a service like @breakingnewson inserting ads with magpie ... let's face it, it would be better then the tweet-a-thon begging they seem to do... an they are more a service then a person tweeting - Sean Reiser
Ancient Internet history (1978)--THE 1st email spam (http://www.templetons.com/brad...) "ON 2 MAY 78 DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION (DEC) SENT OUT AN ARPANET MESSAGE ADVERTISING THEIR NEW COMPUTER SYSTEMS. THIS WAS A FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE USE OF ARPANET AS THE NETWORK IS TO BE USED FOR OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ONLY. APPROPRIATE ACTION IS BEING TAKEN TO PRECLUDE ITS OCCURRENCE AGAIN. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION. MAJOR RAYMOND CZAHOR, CHIEF, ARPANET MANAGEMENT BRANCH, DCA" - Micah Wittman
Sorry, but I'm posting that link again (http://www.templetons.com/brad...) it's packed with interesting discussion. Another teaser quote (from RMS---YES Richard M. Stallman, that 'RMS') "Well, Geoff forwarded me a copy of the DEC message, and I eat my words. I sure would have minded it! Nobody should be allowed to send a message with a header that long, no matter what it is about." - Micah Wittman
Thanks, Robert for starting the discussion. These are very intersting views, positive and negative. Thank you all for the feedback. We've silently introduced a number of changes to Magpie yesterday to give tweeps more control over their magpie-tweets. You can now hand-select ads, put up your own disclaimer (other than #magpie) and control the tweet/ad-ratio better. I'm looking forward to reading your blog post and to getting more feedback in the comments. Thanks again. (I'm the CEO of Magpie & Friends Ltd.) - Jan Schulz-Hofen
TechCrunch just wrote about this issue here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008... called it "PayPerPost for Twitter." - Robert Scoble
As of now, i haven't found Magpie to be that intrusive, probably because not many people I follow have subscribed for the service or there have been very few ads from Magpie. I might unfollow them if the ads starts becoming too frequent. I think the right way for Magpie to go is enabling only handpicked ads which users can share with their friends like any other info they want to share. However, if the same service was introduced by Twitter, I wouldn't mind at all. - Devakishor
@Jan It's great to see you here on FriendFeed joining in on this discussion. I've actually been very impressed with your service so far and the amount of consideration you've put into listening to users' feedback and adapting the service. As others have mentioned, I don't see serving ads in Twitter being much different than serving them in a blog. However, I do love the addition of your two latest features, as I think that puts even more control into the hands of the users, which is what we're all after. - Mike Templeton
@miketempleton thanks for your feedback. you one of the folks who mentioned that feature earlier on uservoice. it took us some time to implement, now let's see who people will like it. - Jan Schulz-Hofen
I'm thinking of adding a "Magpie kill switch" to TweetDeck so these tweets don't even get shown. - Iain Dodsworth
It's simple! If I see magpie in my stream, I will unfollow. - netvista3987
lain, you should just make a filter by keyword - tweets with specified keywords in the stream don't show - Jesse Stay
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As many people as I know who are having a hard time right now - or who would make a nice bit of change for doing, essentially, nothing - very few of them are actually desperate enough to do it. I'd love to have an extra $1700 a month, and I could easily double my follow count by following bots. Yet I'd never do this, not for 10x that. And I'm dumbfounded as to why anyone would want to monetize their personal conversations. "Brought to you by Carl's Jr." - tinu
Robert, I've never had more comments on a post (or more hits) than I did on my anti-magpie post. http://tinyurl.com/5hzkvg - it's still getting hits and comments. Honestly? I don't think it's viable. - Lucretia Pruitt
Its interesting to see how many out there are trying to monetize Twitter 'externally'. This is one but then there is also Tapulous with Tweetsville on the iphone - I paid $4 to them :) - Mrinal Desai
+1 for no ads by followers. I'm un-subscribing anyone who wants to monetize their twitter feed. There is already too much noise on twitter. If you think your content is monetizable, write a blog for Pete's sake! - Shivanand Velmurugan
I don't have a problem with people wanting to monetize their twitter accounts. I don't have a problem with selling ads in the network. My problem is that even if Magpie alternates 1 ad per 5 tweets, what if I follow 5 twits with Magpie. How often am I going to see an ad? The idea is pretty smart actually, but I think it needs a lot of work yet. - Jason Brett
It definitely bugs me!: http://thefutureofads.com/2008... Wrong medium, poorly formatted message, and it's (in most cases) paying people for things that they shouldn't be paid for (conversations with friends). If everyone was just broadcasting on Twitter, it would be a different story, but ads have no place in conversation (as seen by the anti-advertising backlash on forums) so they have no place on Twitter either, at least in this format. - Cory OBrien
PayPerPost destroyed blog valuations without adequate warning. Before loosing a Twitter account you spend time building it's best to take a wait and see approach. They are paying you because of your accounts value - will they reimburse you in the event the account is terminated? Just a thought. - Robert MacEwan
