Twitter has recently decided to prohibit any third party ads from appearing in any Twitter user’s stream. What does this mean for the paid tweeting world? Fortunately (yes, I say fortunately because I participate in paid tweeting myself, via Be a Magpie and Sponsored Tweets), it means nothing. At first I panicked and thought, “Great, here’s the end of something good”, but then I took a closer look at the fine print, as did other concerned bloggers and webentrepreneurs. As it turns out, Twitter is simply banning automatically published third party ads. Twitter users are still free to post whatever they want, whenever they want. So if you want to post an ad for aircraft parts & supplies, you’re still welcome to do so. You just need to post it yourself, rather than relying on a Twitter ad network’s API service to do it for you.

So what does this mean for those of us who participate in paid tweeting? Nothing significant, except that we will be required to manually publish third party ads to our Twitter streams, as Twitter is disallowing the use of third party ads to be published automatically through their API.

Read more at TechCrunch.

Last night I hosted a Twitter party for one of the companies I work for. Before the party kicked off someone on my Twitter list mentioned TweetGrid, and holy crap am I glad they did. With TweetGrid you can keep live tabs on trending topics (depicted by hashtags — for example, topics surrounding wedding invitations and other wedding-related things could be trended using the hashtag #wedding). It presents tweets concerning the trending topics in an automatically updating, chat-like form.

Now that I’ve used TweetGrid once, I will definitely use it again! It worked flawlessly, and the fact that you can tweet directly from the page makes it SO much easier to keep up with everyone!

I’ve had an active Twitter account (@kissmykitty) for over three years now. In that time I have racked up over 18,000 updates, or tweets. I remember celebrating my 10,000th tweet. Now I’m coming up to my 20,000th tweet. Holy crap that’s a lot of updates!

One thing I’ve definitely noticed since using Twitter more regularly is that I don’t blog as much as I used to. After all, when I’ve managed to cram a “worthy” update into a 140 character message, what’s the point in writing a blog entry about the same thing? But sometimes my tweets and blog entries overlap. I may mention a weight loss milestone on Twitter, for example, but then I’ll turn around and blog about how I got there and how much I love the “permanent” weight loss program I chose.

For those of you that use Twitter regularly, do you find that you blog less? Like I said, I know I do. Since I tweet all of the time, I save blogging for worthwhile stuff.

Sponsored Tweets is a product of IZEA. It’s free to join, and the concept is simple enough: get paid to post paid tweets.

What makes Sponsored Tweets just a little bit different from other pay-to-tweet companies is that for many of the tweets, you write your own ad. There’s a link to include and a general subject to stay on, but you choose the disclosure and how you’d like to present the advertisement (much like you do for a sponsored blog entry).

You also get to set your own price. The program takes a look at the type of content you post and the number of followers you have and suggests a price based on that criteria. You can change it, of course, but if you want to attract advertisers, it’s important not to price yourself too high.

Sponsored Tweets allows you to choose between ads that you write, ads that the advertisers write, or both. You can also select specific categories, and opt to accept mature advertisements.

The minimum cash-out is $50, and after using Sponsored Tweets for a few months, I’m happy to report that I reached that minimum, and was paid promptly.

Be a Magpie is a pay-per-tweet program. You have three options for compensation:

• Pay per view
• Pay per click
• Pay per lead
• Pay per sale

Pay per view is the only type of paid tweet I’m interested in displaying on my timeline, so I checked off the other three, which essentially blocks those types of sweets. I’ve found that while the pay per clicks, leads and especially sales pay well, it’s hard to get any follow-through on them. Also, those advertisers tend to be more prevalent, which means more advertising in your feed. Bottom line: I want to be paid for advertising a natural fat burner, not be paid only if someone clicks a link and purchases the product!

The good news is that Be a Magpie allows you to specify the ratio of personal tweets to paid tweets. The minimum is 5, the max is 200. I think having an ad every 5 or 10 tweets is too much, but to each their own. Just remember that if you lose followers, your Twitter account loses monetary value.

Also? You can opt to pre-approve all tweets before they are posted. And, you can customize the disclosure/notification that is displayed before or after (yes, you choose this to) a paid tweet.

I’m happy to report that Be a Magpie does pay. I first joined in the spring, and after several lulls in activities, finally reached the minimum $50 balance and cashed out last month. Since then there has apparently been an increase in advertisers, as my balance is already back up to $20. Not bad!

Screenshot of Be a Magpie payout.

If you have a Twitter account, then you should think about changing up its appearance. You can choose from some basic backgrounds and customize your colors at Twitter > Settings > Design. Base the look of your Twitter profile on the current season, an upcoming holiday, or something you love or are simply passionate about. Or, be a dork like I am and coordinate the look of your Twitter profile with the current layout of your site (see: jenn.nu and the corresponding Twitter profile).

In addition to using Twitter-provided backgrounds, you can also upload your own! I chose my own, and I think it looks lovely:

Of course, plain trees aren’t for everyone, so it’s understandable that you may wish to see what else is available. In that case, avail yourself of the many backgrounds offered at Twitter Backgrounds and twitrounds.com.
General wallpapers and stock photography/illustrations would also work nicely, but make sure to check the creator’s TOS to make sure that internet use of the image(s) is acceptable.

What are your thoughts on sponsored content on Twitter? Would you be okay with it if it was disclosed? If users didn’t post a steady stream of it? If online friends of yours participated in it?

This is something I am honestly mulling over. I do plan on accepting sponsored tweet opportunities from Sponsored Tweets, but I will be very selective in what I post, and how frequently I post. I currently have over 800 followers, and at least half of those are actual people (as opposed to companies and spammers), and I follow and am on friendly terms with that half — about two hundred people.

I accept the possibility that I will alienate some followers and perhaps lose them, but I want to keep that possibility as low as possible. More than anything, I don’t want to lose myself and my personal identity in the process. Just as I can blog about what is touted as the best diet pill without being too obnoxious or overwhelming to visitors, I want to be able to tweet sponsored content (and disclose it!) without cluttering up my timeline and the timelines of my followers. I need to find the right balance, and right now I’m thinking that balance is somewhere between a 1:10 ratio and a 1:20 ratio, with care and quality control being exercised on the sponsored content that does make it through.

As Ted Murphy pointed out, to a large extent Sponsored Tweets and Twitter will be self-policed, because Twitter users, like myself, will not want to lose followers as a result of posting sponsored content.

IZEA is in the process of launching Sponsored Tweets. Sponsored Tweets is just what it sounds like — sponsored updates (tweets) that are posted to a public and active Twitter account.

I am not new to paid tweets. I have been doing a few of them via be-a-magpie.com. I haven’t done enough to get a payout (an account balance must reach $50 before a payout can be completed), but I will one of these days.

Anyway, I am all for paid tweets — just as I am all for paid blogging — so long as there is disclosure. When it comes to blogs, I prefer per-post disclosure, but am willing to do sitewide disclosure. But with Twitter, where every individual update is limited to only 140 characters and can’t be hidden or obscured from viewing, as you can parts of blog entries, I feel that per-tweet disclosure is an absolute must.
And because Twitter provides so many updates from so many users, all of which are available on public timelines, I think it’s important for Twitter users to be responsible and considerate of their followers, and not go overboard with posting sponsored updates. Personally, I plan on adopting a 1:10 ratio — no more than one sponsored tweet for every ten of my own tweets.

I’m really excited to try out Sponsored Tweets. I was invited to be an early adopter of an account, and I have an active profile set up, though so far I haven’t received an offer from an advertiser. I’m sure I will, and I will update again on sponsoredtweets.com when I have had some experience with it.

In the meantime, I’ll keep tabs on what’s happening via Twitter and technology blogs. I have also been contacted by a reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, who will be doing a piece on sponsored tweets. I’m really looking forward to the phone interview!

I’d also love to hear your feedback. What are your thoughts on paid tweeting, and paid blogging in general?