Most of the questioners have been curious about the reasons for running ads within my tweetstream. The backstory is this: I was initially looking at three services (adjix, TweetBucks, and Sponsored Tweets) as part of a larger thought experiment about promotional and word of mouth models for a blog piece over at Extreme Arts & Sciences. That never actually happened, partially because two of the three ended up being non-starters and partially because the thinkers sort of leapfrogged the whole question and took up the larger (and more interesting) questions of trust, content vs. endorsement, and the explosive growth of Facebook.

But there I was, with accounts in all three services, and offers coming in from Sponsored Tweets fairly regularly. What to do? Half lark and half “continuing study,” I went ahead and maintained my account over at Sponsored Tweets. In no particular order, these are the reasons why:

The writing was on the wall.

Back when Twitter had no business model, I did not have a conversation with a rational human that didn’t include ad revenue. If you look at user behavior and innovation on the platform, combined with search functions that can target interest areas, you will quickly come to the conclusion that Twitter is a demographer’s (and marketer’s) dream playground. At the time, advertising was coming to Twitter no matter what. In the here and now, it has arrived.

Targeting is only as good as the scope.

I was, and continue to be, impressed with Izea (the parent company behind Sponsored Tweets) – they get the whole notion of context within and around Twitter. They have displayed time and again a commitment to “getting it right” as far as each tweeter’s community of interest is concerned. They’ve continuously upgraded the keyword system that they employ to match offers to tweeters. They focus almost exclusively on user interest (“this is what my readership gets from me already”) as opposed to what the market will bear. In other words, the engine behind Sponsored Tweets works just as well for a jackass with 1400 followers (ahem) as it does for a Twitter megacelebrity.

I’m your loyal gatekeeper.

I’ve been offered 46 ads for my “fixed rate” and a whole truckload of PPC (I don’t have an accurate count of PPC offers because declining them makes them go poof). I’ve accepted exactly half of the fixed-rate offers – 23 sponsored tweets, and I’ve elected to tweet 8 of the PPC offers that appeared in my dashboard. I would guesstimate that that amounts to about 30% acceptance of offers (again, the number of PPC offers affects this total – I do know that I decline them at least 8 out of 10 times, hence the guess).

The declined offers were either super-stupid (MAKE A BILLION DOLLARS ON THE INTERNETZ), not a fit (a $2 coupon for Jimmy Dean Sausage because one of my topics is “cooking”), or lost out to an offer that I decided to accept (I take one per day max, and have the settings configured to limit sponsored tweets to once every 24 hours). The PPC ads are the ones that are the most likely to suck. Most of the offers were usually just a miss, either geographically or in terms of the target audience.

Anyway, at the beginning I swore to myself that I wouldn’t endorse something that I didn’t, you know, endorse. As a result, I only just reached the point where I’ve earned as much money as I’ve turned down.

I actually like writing ad copy

There is something perversely entertaining about writing an ad in 140 characters in a way that gets people to click on a link. I admit it. I’m especially proud of this Twilight: Eclipse Volvo sponsorship ad:

Remember kids, teen vampires drive Volvos for safety, beauty, and washable interiors. Check out #Edward’s XC60. #ad [link was here]

Or there’s this one for the silicone grill glove:

Incapable of using tongs? Want to safely juggle fire? Do you face every situation wishing you had an oven mitt? #ad [link]

That’s good times, people. I like to think that, between the careful screening of ads and my magic fingers, I’m adding some small amount of value to some percentage of the folks who read them. That’s all you can ask for, with advertising of any type.

Pin money!

I’m now about seven bucks away from reaching $50 earned, which is the “cash out” amount. Like the man says, that and five dollars will get you a cup of coffee.

There’s a certain “I’m worth it” thing about getting $50 for being a “spider” on Twitter. I dunno. Is that lame? It’s probably lame.

Anyway, to those who asked, that’s why. There are definitely reasons why NOT to use such a service, too, but that’s a subject for another blog post.

I never had a dog in this fight. I started using HootSuite at work because of a fairly strict “don’t put crap on your computer” policy. If you wanted to shorten a link, you could either open a new tab and go to is.gd or somewhere, or you could just drop it into the text box in HootSuite and click “Shrink.” From a “woo woo monetization!” standpoint I can see why the captive audience factor could be both a boon and a terrible spiky shackle of torment to a company and an end user, respectively. But from the beginning there was a permanent opt-out available right on the social bar. Maybe it didn’t work if your cookies were set to stun.

But anyway, noteworthy.

I wanted the 3333rd to be something special, to whit, this. Yes, I know, it’s awesome.

This is YOUR CHANCE to get attribution for an awesome play (hee hee) on bridge the game, Bridge-the-Town, and anything else bridgy that you can think of. You see, my topic is “Why you should be playing bridge.” I want to open with an only-halfway-lame joke about Bridgetown (let’s face it, they’re all going to be lame). So get your thinking caps on and add a comment to this post with your best entry.

Just like the Ignite folks, I’m giving you full license to “hack the format” in any way that’s still germane to the topic – so any suitable (HA!) opening gag that fits on a slide is fair game (Whoa now!).

Rules:

1. Nothing that a child shouldn’t see. It can be clever and edgy, but not gross/pornographic/etc.
2. I reserve the right to not pick any of the submissions, pick more than one, or totally forget that I wrote this post.
3. If I do pick yours, you will be given attribution (within reason – probably name and Twitter handle).
4. The slides will probably go up on Slideshare or somewhere under a CC license, so you need to be comfortable with that.
5. Comments must be date/time stamped no later than this Saturday night, Feb. 7, at midnight.

Go cat go!

I’m thinking we absolutely positively have to have branded maracas.