

Pay With A Tweet - chaosmachine
http://www.paywithatweet.com/

======
swombat
So, advertising/spam on Twitter. I'm sure Twitter's not going to be
implementing anything like that in the near future.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I thought that they'd pretty much announced that they were doing it?
Effectively placing adverts in the timeline.

But this is about Twitter the platform rather than Twitter the organisation
isn't it? It's closer to formalising the sort of promo the MacHeist guys do
where you get extra stuff for tweeting about them.

I must admit I like the idea as a business. It's limitation is that the more
successful it is, the more frequent it's messages, the more spam like it
becomes, the more people will hate it and the less successful it will
become...

~~~
nsfmc
i encountered this sort of "pay with a tweet" (pwat?) via a macheist promo
you're mentioning and i had _exactly_ the same reaction as actually paying
cash, except that it was more difficult because it was a sort of half-hearted,
monetarily encouraged plug for something i wasn't internally raving about. At
the point i actually did it, i felt like i had sold out.

Which is to say that _pwat_ could be totally effective in being a payment
mechanism, but only if the stakes of the _pwat_ 's message are high enough to
equate to a non-trivial reblogging of a url.

------
scrrr
Hm, at first this is not a bad idea.

As opposed to spam or other Twitter ad-networks where you need thousands of
followers before you can earn a dollar, this creates a win-win situation for
both the payer and the payee. Instead of hoping that people who downloaded
your free product will recommend it to others, you can now rely on it.

However, you tweet before you have seen the product. Thus you might be
recommending crap to your followers that you would rather warn them about.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
> this creates a win-win situation for both the payer and the payee.

And a loss for every follower of the "payer".

~~~
dho
You could use an account with no real followers.

~~~
whatusername
Just like we all have something like a fake/spam email address (that we give
out to the sites we don't care about) -- we'll end up with fake twitter
accounts.

Also - can't we just filter this out from a client?

------
pbrumm
When I saw the title my first thought was a system like <http://flattr.com/>

which would monitor your tweets and then distribute your monthly $3 to the
sites or persons.

That way your donating that you have interest or a book that you have read.
Instead of spamming your friends

------
hugh3
And of course, the moment I get one of these from some person is the moment I
unfollow that person.

And if they become truly prevalent, I'll delete my twitter account (which I
was already kinda on-the-fence about).

------
JoachimSchipper
...so, getting people to spam for you.

~~~
robryan
It's on par with the services where people charge you for them to Tweet about
something and they don't seem to to have been received to badly. Just another
form of advertising I guess.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I have a separate account for that stuff - JonIsAWhore I believe it's called
(it's been a while since I used it).

I don't mind these things. If I have friends who abuse them I unfollow them or
hide their updates.

The only thing I'd like is to know that I can get the product / service the
old fashioned way if I want by paying cash, and keeping my soul clean if
that's what I choose to do.

~~~
16s
Very good account name. Twitter is the pimp and the advertisers are the Johns.
Google and FaceBook are pimps too.

------
psawaya
See also: <http://www.tweetforatrack.com/>

------
JoachimSchipper
So, how long before someone makes a twittinator? (See
<http://www.mailinator.com/.>)

------
edw519
Because there's not enough spam already.

------
ajcronk
We launched a feature like this last year; we called it Tweet to Download
(demo <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIngL60r3_M>).

At first it did seem like spamming, but I am at peace with it now. It is
analogous to the FB Like button. You should only tweet out stuff that you
like, and want to share and download.

The key is to give a sample of the product (in our case song clip) before
broadcasting to your social network. I think we could even allow full song
stream, and still see similar download/tweet numbers.

In a world where musicians don't get real currency, they are asking for your
social currency.

------
lwhi
Despite my misgivings, I do think it's interesting how Twitter's evolving as
an interpersonal protocol .. with natural language and semantic hacks
expanding the scope of each 160 character blob.

------
chegra
Ok, I like it.

About the spamming bit: It is a genuine recommendation. You are directly
recommending that product. It is not like a product where you have to
recommend some other product that you don't care about or don't even care to
use.

Every tweet is to be judge by a case by case basis.

------
markkat
Is there a 'minimum followers' option? A tweet to 0-1 followers isn't so
great. I'd try it with a PDF I sell.

------
bena
Do you make it up through volume? What is the tweet to dollar conversion ratio
currently?

~~~
rationalbeaver
Last I checked the value was on par with the Zimbabwe dollar.

------
railsfactor
This company invented this model <http://promojam.com> and they are already
working with all the big record labels and entertainment co's...

------
antirez
Using this service the user is effectively trading time of his followers for
money. One of the worst kind of spam ever.

------
fylox
Wow, somebody reinvented the snowball system except for that in this model
actually only one person is going to profit.

------
jrockway
No thanks. I'll give you money, but I'm not going to waste my friends' time
for your business gain.

------
ciupicri
I don't see a button that let's me tweet about this company/service.

