Twitter hangers-on beat the bird to the money

Since Twitter seems unwilling or unable to do so, a host of companies are floating ideas to profit from the site's fast-growing popularity and large, dedicated user base. It's old news that Dell Computers said it made around $1 million last year from promotions announced over its Twitter feed, but upstart companies are attempting to craft their entire business plan around a business with no business plan. Whew!

Germany's Magpie and Friends is paying Twitter users for the right to sell ads within their tweets, which the company will then auction to advertisers who want to associate with a given keyword, not unlike Google's AdSense program. Magpie splits the proceeds from the ad auctions with the user, and said fees can range from a few cents to $13 for the placements.

Glam Media is another coattail-rider: The online ad network packages tweets around a certain topic, then sells advertising on the index page. It piloted the program on Oscar night for Johnson and Johnson.

While innovative uses of Twitter's audience could mean big things for third-party companies, Twitter may be stuck with all of the maintenance and bandwidth costs without any ad revenue, as advertisers wouldn't likely pay Twitter for something they currently use for free.

That's part of the reason Twitter co-founder Biz Stone recently announced that the company will be setting up commercial accounts for a fee, but in typical Twitter fashion, Stone could not offer a date when the service would launch. 

For more:
- see the Wall Street Journal article 

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