A new service from 83 Degrees called Super Chirp launches this evening that lets Twitter users get paid for their content stream.
This is a theme we’ve touched on in the past. There is a huge market for celebrity fan pages that Super Chirp will play right into. In fact, 83 Degrees CEO Narendra Rocherolle wrote a guest post here last year called A Missed Opportunity – Britney On Twitter where he talks about the idea. Twitter is mobile and it’s real time, two huge advantages over normal fan sites. And it’s constantly refreshed with new content. Britney Spears has 1.7 million Twitter followers. How many of them would be willing to pay $1, or $10, per month to see a premium stream of her content?
Here’s how Super Chirp works. Unlike Twitpub, where publishers have to create a new Twitter account, Super Chirp works through direct messages (Twitter’s private message system). That means publishers can leverage their existing Twitter accounts to promote the paid streams. Users subscribe to the content on the Super Chirp site, pay via Paypal, and then get the messages via DM. They can also visit Super Chirp to see all those paid messages, and sort them by publisher.
This is a natural product for celebrities to embrace. But it’s also interesting for charities – loyal supporters can donate to the charity and get a stream of news relevant to that charity, or whatever. Some news outlets may try to charge for streams as well. I could imagine that at least some of our followers on our main Twitter account would pay to get additional information if it had enough value.
Any publisher that wants to sign up can as long as they have a Twitter account. The publisher sets the price, between $0.99 and $9.99 per month. Super Chirp keeps 30% of the gross, and that includes the Paypal fees. So the Publisher ends up with 70%
I think it’s a fantastic idea that at the very least may prove out the product for Twitter itself. If Twitter launches something like this directly, Super Chirp could become irrelevant quickly. Although, if I were running Twitter and Super Chirp got traction, I’d buy the service and port over the publishers and paying users to keep it all going.
83 Degrees is the same company that launched Power Twitter, a service I’m absolutely addicted to.
You can read more about Super Chirp on the 83 Degrees blog.
Update: Here’s one guy who has already signed up. Looks like he’ll be doing $9.99/month stock tips — but he’d like Super Chirp to up the range.
And it looks like Loren Feldman of 1938media just signed up as well as the “funniest guy on Twitter,” for $0.99 a month. Feel free to leave your Super Chirp profile in the comments if you sign up as well and say what you will specialize in.
swell idea!
can’t figure out what’s taking twitter SO LONG to push out interesting revenue streams like these…
Verified identity needs to be centralized and put in the hands of users, rather than waiting for services to figure out a solution. Services don’t have a strong incentive and will likely make things far more complicated. One way I’ve found to do this is use DandyID, a web service that manages my verified identity on all of the services I use (I only use about 6 but DandyID says they handle over 300). They also have some cool analytics.
Not having to create a new Twitter account is a great bonus. I like the idea even more for charities than for celebrities. Groups raising funds via local marathons, for example, may be able to use this model well.
The 70/30 split is generous. However in a world awash in information, most of which is noise, I wonder how many people will actually pay for a short bursts of information.
Isn’t StockTwits trying something similar?
Do subscribers enter into a binding contract not to ReTweet their subscription? Ah.. suffocating
Nice except I’d like to charge $99/month and $997/month for 2 tiers of premium tweets, super chirp, i already got the audience, just gimme the product and the price and u can keep your 30%!
Do subscribers enter into a binding agreement to not ReTweet their subscription? Suffocating.
Hopefully better than Chirp* was
so…..there is money in the twitter business…
great initiative!
I mean it is obvious — pay to follow — Twitter, here is your revenue model.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
I think this is a wonderful idea…. If only people on the Internet were not addicted to free stuff…
Specially on Twitter
Goody….
What the…. where did my comment go?
so…there is money in the twitter business…
great initiative!
more useless companies that revolve around 9 lines of code and worst ofd all gets coverage on a blog…
keep perpetuating this please.
its an ok idea and success will depend on content provided by the celebrity of course. people will not pay for the trivial things celebs are tweeting right now, but content, such as more intimate pictures, privliges( presale of tickets), more fan interaction, official multimedia, etc to paying customers would generate enough value to warrant at least a $1.
Amazing seeing how many startups/businesses are now based on Twitter. I bet it’s approaching the number FB has, even with a smaller use base.
What’s with these *3 numbers chirping? Thirteen23 offered *chirp, now 83 degrees launches Super Chirp. Next up is 123 degrees with Ultra Chirp
I don’t care what are happening with those numbers in names are. The most important thing is there are some guys out there who are building things up to benefit fanatic Twitterers financially.
Hi
Good service,, but i have a doubt..
Is it along twitter TOS ?
I don’t know, check Twitter’s TOS and report back your findings.
good question…I had my account on Twitter suspended once because I had put it up for sale (on a site offering that)…I honestly didn’t know =(
9 lines of code
deserves an article thought cuz it does something with twitter, no matter how useful it is
Sounds like a clever idea from a consistently clever guy… Congrats Narendra!
i don’t get it. if a site can’t sell me in less than 15 seconds then they have lost me for good.
How do you not get it?
How do you not get it?
You don’t get it because you’re a moron.
I’m reading his user feedback and it’s not particularly impressive.
http://83degrees.com/news
This reminds me of celebrity 900 numbers. 1-900-909-JEFF forever!
Apparently I’m the 1st to signup, wooo hooo, gonna talk about the stock market to my special subscribers this week, exciting stuff!
Nothing bad to test this module setting the price lowest to $0.99.
This is just another example of how twitter is useless and just hype
so you’re telling me that Britney fans can pay to get premium content from her twitter feed. Don’t you think that she can do this thru her own website? Seriously, you probably just gave a bunch of celebs a great idea to monetize their fansites.
how hard would it be for Britney’s webmaster to set up a payment page and then when you subscribe you get text messages or emails sent to you.
BTW, don’t even get me started on twitter DM’s… With all the spam from DM’s does anyone check them or just turn them off…
also, what will stop people from retweeting the premium content????
At least you tried to monetize twitter… God knows they don’t know how to.
the twitter followers represent the number of people willing to consume content through the twitter medium.
Wait, so as we Internet users complain about the last few remaining pay walls for what we thing should be ubiquitous information… we’re now supposed to be super excited for a new pay wall just because it has something to do with Twitter?
What goes around comes around, I guess…
Mike, if it’s such a fantastic idea, why don’t you drop the ads off your site and make every 5th post something I pay for?
I kid. Your site, as cool as it is (and I mean that sincerely), doesn’t have the “get out of jail free” card that makes Twitter, well, Twitter.
There are very few people or groups that can make paid content work. Celebrities are an exception but why would they share revenue when they could build it out fairly easily.
People can pretend like others want to pay for their content, but the fact is that’s generally not the case. Payments are indirect via advertisements. As popular as TC is, who would pay for their content?
A clever idea though. Kudos to the team.
How much money would it take to get Britney Spears to leave Twitter completely? I’m willing to pitch in!
exactly. there are lots of folk on Twitter that I would pay to leave =)
Why does it matter to you if Britney is on Twitter? If you don’t follow her, she might as well not be there.
This strikes me as an idea whose time has come. I suspect it wouldn’t have gone far a year ago, because very few of us using Twitter then would have considered anyone’s tweets worth paying for. But the recent and ongoing influx of famous people and organizations (teams, charities, etc.) and their zillions of fans could make this a winner.
It’s darkly amusing to see all the abuse that was hurled at Rocherolle’s post of last October. Mike, I suggest another post in a few months letting us know how Super Chirp is doing.
umm, did my two comments just get deleted? good thing, because I noticed FacebookConnect is one of the worst walled gardens I’ve yet to seen (second to Cyworld) http://twitter....atus/2072751789
What I thought when I first read this article still stands: Do subscribers enter into a binding agreement to not ReTweet their subscription? Suffocating.
Now don’t delete my comment, I use Twitter too. Twittolidarity, yo
Your comment* is still there. CTRL+F my friend
it was gone the moment I typed the third comment – something is unstable with the FacebookConnect servers to the point that FBC comments won’t show up when the connection is down.
I think it is genius – and definitely has potential. There are some people for whom I would pay if they provided exclusive, premium content – Seth Godin and Gary V are two examples that immediately come to mind.
The trick for the site will be to hound these personalities and make it worth their while to stick it out for a few months. That’s going to be a challenge.
That said, it may also be a challenge for the personalities to provide value to both of their camps – the free and the premium crowds – without jeopardizing both by becoming spammy. That alone may destroy the concept.
even the niche that may exist here for paying for exclusive content (fans, insiders, deals, early info etc.) i think it is mostly a tough sell on twitter. because those who could feasibly gather a decent amount of paying subscribers could just do this outside of twitter and even without the hefty 30% fee that superchirp wants to charge. you can setup a private blog, email list, whatever! no need to use twitter. no need to use superchirp. and what happens when people repost content on the net anonymously?
i just dont see this working in the real world. maybe in some cases. but not enough to be significant. maybe i’m too pessimistic. i ranted about this some on @sull.
No! This is what Twitter has tried NOT TO DO.
Do you really think this is unique?
TW is staying away from charging, at all!
Interesting app! People are creating interesting business models using Twitter. What about Twitter itself?
I’ve added this app to Twitdom.com
You should be able to pay $1 – $5 a month to follow a brand (person, company, event) and have access to special tweets where they can give discounts and promos or special passes
with scale the subscription rev can more than make up for any discount, and you are rewarding early adopters/evangelists who will spread the word
Think “PremiumCrunch” on twitter where all the paid followers get first access and discounts on TC events (and even some premium content others don’t see) – get 10 – 100K followers signing up on that for a few bucks a month and can be a serious source of additional recurring revenue for any company
you guys should lead the charge, free is great, but paying just a little money for ridiculously more value, is way better in my mind
you have at least 1 potential paying customer waiting…
Why would TC need twitter to do that? They can just do it on the website…
People have to stop thinking that twitter is making all these really cool opportunities…
Right on Tim. Timothy Sykes is one of the best online marketers. The guy knows how to draw an audience and how to get them to take out their credit cards.
Am curious why all the negative comments against the idea was removed ?
What happened to all the comments that were here before.
Brilliant. Great idea. Great model.
The guys that are really going to make $ are the ones who come up with a paid filter scheme. Some people you have to follow logically, but picking through the junk for the nuggets is the trick that will make the money. My 2 cents
Being smart is believing only half of what you read. Brilliance is knowing which half to believe.
Checkout what TwitPub’s founder has to say in this interview: http://2above.c...darren-prosper/
Michael,
if you would like to earn money from your Twitter stream maybe you could try idea which I wanted to test it with @arringtoncrunch but I gave up because I couldn’t gain enough followers to test it out.
The idea is to show few ads / day in your Twitter stream. For example:
“AD: Google Adwords, advertise your business….http…”
As far I could remember, I was planning to charge companies (or individuals) 1€ / 1.000 followers / Ad
Lets say that you will publish 3 ads / day. Currently you have 680.000 followers. Thats 680 € x 3 = 2.040 € per day. 61.200€ per month. Not bad at all
Your followers are very targeted niche. Tech fans, enterprenours, VCs…. It would be very interesting for tech companies to show their ads there.
Tweetie did it very well on their client. Its actually first time that I love ads. They look cool and there is always something relevant which I might want to check out.
On other hand, you could offer your followers a premium status where they can get it without ads and for this you could use Super Chirp for example.
Im giving you idea because Im not in Tech business and Im not planning to do something like that but it seems to me like very reasonable way of making money with Twitter.
why wouldn’t it work, u subscribe not only to the stream, but to the *network* =)
http://superchi....com/MarkMayhew
@ Hal leach – that’s why they introduced tweet deck, it’s much smarter then twitter & lets you search any term & shows real time tweats in that field, your not trolling through all the random junk
Good point for web users, but mobile use makes it a bit harder, as does the fact that I would literally have to know what they were going to tweet about prior to their doing so in order to search for it. Those that I follow, I do so for a particular reason, and I do have to wade through junk to get anything worthwhile. I’m really just whining I suppose – I want ONLY the tasty bits (even when I have no clue as to what they may be about) without the drivel and the tweets made (obviously) just to tweet something. Alligator tears … I know. I’ll whine quietly to myself now.
So people without a life now have to pay, to here about someone else’s? Wow sign me up.
This is a great idea. Let’s see if it works. 30 percent is an awfully big grab for the devs.
Interesting and innovative. It’s opt-in, so nothing wrong with this. I can’t imagine Twitter standing by and NOT wanting a piece of the action if the action actually gets big enough. And that’ll be the thing to watch. Will this catch on in any substantial way.
this is a very good idea.i like it so much
A subscription is an upfront payment: no guarantee on the value of the content.
People prefer pay-as-you-go system.
We’re going to experiment with a paid twitter system that takes the reverse tack. Aggregate users with good deal content for high value geolocations and then charge businesses with expiring inventory to access the feed. Very early stages but check out http://www.fyndhawaii.com which feeds to twitter.com/fyndhawaii.
So. Now you can waste your time AND your money.
Mac OS X tips & tricks tweets are now available to subscribers first http://superchirp.com/cksample then public 7 days later.
Err… 14 days later. Whatever the setting is in superchirp.
“Mac OS X tips & tricks”
please think of something you CAN’T get by doing a google search