Online Media Cultist

Just a few short years ago, the idea that blogging could be a full time job seemed farfetched. Yet today there are a number who manage to do this, though the hours required are infamously brutal and the work required great. These days it makes sense to blog for profit in pajamas, since you’re going to be up most of the night anyway!

But what about microblogging? You could make the argument that paid microbloggers already exist in the form of social media workers who make their wage by blogging, microblogging, and engaging far and interwebs wide on the behalf of their organizations.

Let’s set aside this growing industry and look instead at those manic Twitter fiends, those FriendFeed addicts, those Pownce, uh, pouncers and whether it’s possible to microblog one’s passions and beliefs and expertise into some kind of tangible financial sum.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot lately and have come to the conclusion that while it is possible, the idea is still so new that it will take people some time to get used to it.

When Magpie, an “ad network for Twitter” launched recently, I was very curious to see how people would react. The deal with Magpie, as the site explains, is:

1. Advertisers create campaigns providing a message and some keywords.
2. Matching twitterers are selected, costs are calculated based on # of followers and hotness of the topic.
3. Ads will be blended into the message stream: 5 tweets, one ad, 5 tweets, one ad, …

In other words, as a microblogging Twitter addict, you sign up, set the interval of Magpie ads that you’re willing to accept on your Twitter feed, and then in theory let the riches roll in as you monetize your “life stream” through this rent-my-Twitter-ad space service. Magpie, for its part, attempts to place contextually relevant ads into your stream based on the topics you’re “tweeting” about.

As you might expect, the reaction from some has been negative, to say the least:

* The idea of twitter.com/beamagpie is completely spam-annoying

* Be-A-Magpie Is PayPerPost For Twitter

And here’s a pretty good representative reaction of Magpie fear and loathing on Twitter:

What the brass tits is Magpie? I feel instinctively that it is wrong, that I must hate it. Is this correct?

Check out Twitter search for “hate magpie” for more (if less entertaining) of same!

Reactions such as these led me to wonder why some would react so strongly to the insertion of advertising into the previously “pure” Twitter environment. I then recalled that only some 8-10 years ago, there was a sizeable contingent that didn’t believe in online advertising of any form.

So it takes time for people to get used to new stuff. That doesn’t mean that Magpie will become the advertising behemoth of the social media world, but I still can’t help but think that as microblogging becomes an ever more important part of the online publishing realm, there will be a natural need for advertising services to support it.

So Magpie falls under the general heading of “sponsored posts.” This led me to go a little further to think that, in fact, sponsored posts are already a staple of the blogging world, particularly with those “big blog” sites that attract large audiences and the heavy hitting sponsors that go with it.

Mashable is a great example of a publisher who employs this kind of online advertising. They run occasional posts in which the entire content of the post is material about their sponsors. Presumably, the vast majority of Mashable readers are fine with this, understanding that websites need to pay the bills, and some people probably find the sponsor information intriguing enough to click a link and check it out more closely… which makes the advertising and Internet economies spin round, of course.

Now, what’s the difference – really – between a Mashable sponsored post and a Magpie tweet inserted into a Twitter feed? I would argue that there are differences, but that they are more subtle and nuanced than many might recognize upon first glance.

This post, by the way, was kicked off by a fantastic conversation on Twitter itself. I had a ball trying to poke holes in the argument, playing devil’s advocate at times, with the likes of Marc Vermut, David N. Wilson, and Brandon J. Mendelson.

My Twitter feed is available here.