When newbies sign up to Twitter now, they are presented with a list of 100 suggested users to start following. Simply being on that list can boost your followers well above 100,000. Several people and organizations on the list (such as Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Kevin Rose, the New York Times, and CNN) now have more than 250,000 followers each. Many of the most popular Twitter users are on the list, including TechCrunch (we have 214,465 followers). It is insane.
Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis, who is no Twitter slouch himself with 61,266 hard-earned followers, thinks that being one of the top 20 on the suggested list will be worth as much as a Superbowl ad within five years. He is offering Twitter $250,000 to lock in a spot on the suggested list for two years, or $120,000 for one year. I emailed Calacanis (who is our partner in putting on the TechCrunch 50 conference) and he confirms the offer is dead serious. In fact, he contacted Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams last week about it, and is lobbying investor Fred Wilson. Calacanis writes:
I believe that in five years the top 20 recommend slots will be worth $1m a year each–super bowl commercial level in fact.
. . . this is 100% dead serious. I’m thinking of sending the check today anyway…. if it sits on their desk they might just cash it.
He wants to lock in the price now because he thinks it is a great marketing opportunity. It is not unusual for people on the suggested list to gain 10,000 new followers every day. That comes to 3.6 million a year, and even if half unsubscribe, that is still a direct channel to more than a million potential customers. Those are customers who feel a connection with you because of the personal nature of Twitter messages.
If other companies feel the same way, sellingthese slots could be a lucrative side business for Twitter. At $120,000 a pop, 20 slots would generate $2.4 million in revenues the first year. There are already brands on the suggested list, such as JetBlue, Zappos, Whole Foods, and Dell Outlet. Why not make them pay? To avoid spamming, Calacanis suggests a simple rule:
people who buy the slot will lose it if they abuse it. they are limited to 10 tweets per day and they can’t spam the list. if I suck folks unsubscribe. if i spam (i.e. go above 10 tweets per day) they knock me, jetblue or Zappos out of top 20.
I think Calacanis just can’t stand the fact that he is no longer one of the top Twitter users and wants to buy his way back to the top. Dave Winer argues that the suggested list is a bad idea in general. But maybe Calacanis is onto something. How much do you think a top-20 Twitter slot will go for in one year?
1 million sparkles for a top spot – I’d even throw in a colorful rainbow and a dinner with The Grand Unicorn.
Sparkles and eternal love for everyone!!!
Oh yeah … I offer Twitter $1 million nay $100 million. Suck on that Calacanis! You self promoting bastard.
I believe people like John Chow may want to give more for that, since there is pretty good way to monetize the Twitter traffic.
Wow – that self-centered prick needs to just STFU. No one cares, get over yourself.
This is just crazy stuff. 250 grand!!!! pffft. Calacanis should realise, these aren’t good times
Jason is smoking the Calacannabis
Calacanis generates 50,000 hits to Mahalo from his Twitter account every month. Fact.
in these times, I’d say take the money and run. If Jason is proven right, at least you now have a decent price floor. If he’s proven wrong and its not that valuable anyways, then I guess everyone will be tweeggling about it for about…let me see…two years?
WTF?! This is a really bad idea! geesh
I would take free lunch for a month and mention myself eating it if anyone wants to offer. That’s as far as I go, although $250k is pretty tempting. Talk shows make personal endorsements, why can’t Social Media? As long as they’re personal and your stream isn’t filled with them.
Just noticed this is for one of the 20 slots – not sure I care one way or the other for one of those right now. It doesn’t fit what I do, anyway right now, but I see why people want them.
Hard-earned followers? Right.. He used the old trick of following everyone in the world for a couple weeks then dropped them.
Twitter should use ppc model and charge per follower.
On twitter we have another problem, the name of our company “Edulang” which is a legal trademark for all European countries has already been taken by an individual without any visible reasons. Anyone knows how can we ask Twitter to give us back the name without taking legal action ?
Well, if they do decide to sell slots on that list I just hope they will also allow people to opt out of being included on it – if I happened to have enough followers to qualify I wouldn’t want to risk being mistaken for a paying manipulator of the system – I wouldn’t blame Twitter for taking the marketers up on the idea but would hate to be confused with them.
Wow, what a thought… Brand managers should take notice and make sure that they secure the brand name on Twitter, otherwise someone else may try to extract money in exchange for the Brand.
It’s too bad he is willing to spend this money on something as trivial as twitter follows and not spend it to keep dedicated employees hired at his sinking ship called Mahalo.
Why not auction for a slot? They can do it every week for instance.
I think Calacanis is right.
Twitter today is much like facebook a year ago.
no one can tell what it will be used for in three years time, but it is garnering users like mad and it’s becoming more useful everyday, partly because of those users, partly because of new features and 3rd party coders. As such the users are less likely to leave.
So in 2-3 years time, features that not even conceived yet would become possible because of the number of users. Having 1m of users, or 2 or 10, that are actually waiting for stuff from you everyday is certainly worth a few grands. I also suspect that past a certain threshold, it is easier to gain twitter followers than, say, feed subscribers!
that being said, the follower/followee relation which was the cornerstone of twitter could no longer be that relevant in 2 years time. But I’d say it’s worth the risk.
now if you can only turn those tweets in profit…
Both Jason and Thomas have a point. Jason, in the sense that he understand the monetary value of having so much exposure (how much each click to one of your links is worth). And Thomas, because we live in an age now where people have a voice and don’t like the idea of people _buying_ their attention. That "feature" would get more negative press-coverage than anything⦠Can you see "Twitter, corrupt?" as a future headline?
Some will say that it’s just business, as usual. Credibility?! In economic crisis that might be a minor question. But I agree with Dave Winer; the “suggested” (try to get in Twitter if you don’t accept it…) list is a bad idea in general.
This makes sense for Calacanis. The sheer amount of users it would generate that would then go over to Mahalo would be worth the investment. It not about self-promotion for Calcanais its about driving traffic to his company.
Sounds like too cheap of an offer!
Oh ya…another publicity stunt for link bait sounds like…and he said SEO was dead!
[quote]also, you could only offer these to super qualified companies/brands like Zappos, JetBlue and Laker[/quote]
That is great, but who decides what is a “super qualified company”? I’ve heard of Zappos, JetBlue and the Lakers, but I’ve never heard of this Jason C. guy nor his company Mahoalo.
Seems like he is his own argument against himself getting a sponsorship spot. Say that ten times.
Big corporations will demand to be followed by default by paying Twitter. Otherwise users will not follow the big brands even if they see them in the list.
@Chris: âIt not about self-promotion for Calcanais its about driving traffic to his company.â This is not a slam on Jason – but I don’t see those two as markedly different things.
Wow, that’s obscene. Twitter — you better take it!
Brilliant. Twitter should take the dough!
Um, what happens when 1 person on Twitter says,
“Hey! Let’s make a point of unfollowing everyone on the recommended list!” — and then makes a hashtag game of it?
Merry pranksters that we Twitterers are, the recommended spot becomes a scurge. Old twitterers will joyfully unfollow, while scads of newbies follow like mad.
So what happens to the value of that spot then — which in merry prankster Twitterland can be diminished to worthless with a couple of almost effortless Tweets?
Jason is accomplishing more than one thing here, first he wants to buy his way to the top, nothing surprising there. He tried to buy people away from Digg to gain exposure for… what was the name of that site again?
Being a staunch believer in capitalism (albeit ethical capitalism) wanting to pay for exposure is not a bad thing, its simply paying for a service, but Twitter should not put capital in front of content, because then Twitter becomes a commercial microblogging tool. They have funding, but if they can avoid this, they should. It would take away the very thing that endears it to its users.
not to mention alternative way of online advertising (other than banner and keywords) will be big this year:
http://www.weal...vertising-fall/
Does that answer the question of how Twitter will monetize then?
That position sure has a lot of value (playing with facebook connect:)
Start spamming and the followers are going to dissappear
That’s absurd. How about this…
If he sends me a check for $120k (if it’s on my desk, I’m likely to cash it), I will get 10 major celebrities to RT his posts for a month straight by personally donating 10k to the charity of each of their choice.
The best suggestion is for people to use twitter, and see who are the most conversational users of the site. Follow those are the most engaged and you’ll get far more out of the site.
It’s all relative. I think the top 100 [or more] accounts will be worth a lot of money. If you have hundreds of thousands of followers or eventually over a million that is a lot of impressions, page views / distribution power, etc.
$250K seems pretty cheap for the display counts / clickthroughs that this spot on Twitter would generate.
That’s putting a lot of faith in Twitter’s market influence.
Its obvious how Twitter is prime at this point for marketing of any kind. I get followers whom I don’t even know. And that is exactly the problem. Twitter is a good example of something Google should be tackling… information overload. It really only takes one follower with tweets saying “Hey, I just bought my first MacBook Pro and you can buy one here at this URL, CLICK IT!” to realize the low quality of information. I see all these updates, and while yes they do have my attention, I’m becoming more weary, and more nonchalant. Words and their meaning become text, text and layout become design, the design and presentation become pretty, the significance and standard of quality is significantly lowered with information overload.
This is interesting
as A great business man and business founder,out of there courage of giving that predictions and ready to give hard cash for what he said,I think he already got “Authority for what he saying”I believe for what he said only its already “thousand follower ,and thousand fans who is ready to stand for what Jason believe and support him for free
I dont see why it is morally wrong to do with twitter. They got a ton of VC cash and have no idea how to monetize their web entity. I think Jason’s idea is quite smart and is no different than paying to be on Oprah. Besides, what’s Twitter anyway? An overhyped (in a Paris Hilton famous-for-being-famous way) aggregated Rss feed for people. Noobs tend to glorify mediocre stuff these days. This idea exists since the time of newsgroups. Pre-web. The model, built it and they’ll come, and then figure out how to make money is an insult to classic business. Half of the worls 20 yo dropouts think they can be the next Google. I say get a life and start innovating something useful.
I dont see why it is morally wrong to do with twitter. They got a ton of VC cash and have no idea how to monetize their web entity. I think Jason’s idea is quite smart and is no different than paying to be on Oprah. Besides, what’s Twitter anyway? An overhyped (in a Paris Hilton famous-for-being-famous way) aggregated Rss feed for people. Noobs tend to glorify mediocre stuff these days. This idea exists since the time of newsgroups. Pre-web. The model, built it and they’ll come, and then figure out how to make money is an insult to classic business. Half of the world’s 20yold dropouts think they can be the next Google. I say get a life and start innovating something useful.
Is it me or is Calacanis the Paris Hilton of the tech world… he’s not particularly interesting, he just wants to be famous!
At least Paris is hot…
Sorry for the double post, my gear is faster that TC I guess
, anyway I think the twitter guys lack some serious business skills. IMO they should take the Facebook offer and go. Seriously: $500M (even in virtual hypothetical FB value) is a good offer for a personal RSS feed dispatcher — which is what really twitter is, no matter how much the noobs worldwide are thinking of it-. And a poorely coded one that is. They can’t even figured out how to scale it, since they built it in the wrong foundations in the first place. And what? Over $50 million for this thing? Come on people! Either Silicon Valley lacks coding talent, or twitter is very good at pitching to VC’s, or VCs can’t find some really innovcative ideas or they have a lots of drug money to laundry. Take your pick. I believe if they dont act fast, they’ll be the next has been. Facebook has the proper scale and can be monetized in many ways, unlike twitter that has no business plan. Will someone in the valley tell all those college buys that coding and entrepreneurship are not the same thing? Get a business plan, a marketing strategy, an idea that when implemented properly solves a problem and at scale, a plan B in case you fail, and then you have yourself a viable web property to sell, or give someone else the management.
I foresee the birth of a billion dollar industry: twitter optimization.
What is the percentage of google advertisers who get most of their business locally? AdBirds is the domain where small businesses rule. Any listed business or brand can be searched by shortest distance FREE of charge on AdBirds.
There’s people out there dying of hunger and this man is willing to spend 250k on his ego.