Balsamiq Studios LLC is slowly earning hero status in my eyes. Peldi's entrepreneurial spirit is contagious.
The major problem with this form of advertising is that it takes a person with tact, diplomacy, and self control to do it right. If Twitter supports the '$1 / $$ message' universally it will attract many advertisers lacking any if all of those characteristics. That could result in a diluted user experience and eventual spamization of the system.
Still, in its purest form (and micro doses), this is a great way to perform grassroots marketing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you @ message somebody even if they aren't following you? He is not referring to a general $$ tweet, but to an @ $$ tweet.
Unless you broaden your definition of spam. I believe I can be spammed by legitimate companies of which I am a customer. For instance, GoDaddy, Amazon, NewEgg, et al spam me all the time. It's not that I don't enjoy their products/services, but they are emailing me unsolicited advertisements (yes, I know I can opt out). This is the type of spamization I am referring to, not Nigerian scams, Viagra ads, and the like.
I don't think $1 / message is prohibitive for a GoDaddy or an Amazon.
LEELA: Didn't you have ads in the twentieth century?
FRY: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio... and in magazines... and movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written in the sky. But not in dreams, no sirree.
> I am ready to pay Twitter a dollar for each of my tweets that starts with $$
This could get very expensive very fast, but still looks like great ROI considering people on twitter are still early adopters (and hence have money and are willing to spend it) and if they do mention one of the keywords listed, they will probably want the product.
To be really effective you will need to quickly scan the tweet (NLP or just look at the users profile) to filter results, but considering the current signal-to-noise on twitter, even brute-force is worth it.
Other startups have been doing this for a while e.g. FreshBooks, but no one has offered money yet.
I did the same using Summize (before it got acquired), and every 2 minutes there would be a tweet about the keywords I target. But be careful one could consider it spam, so I would suggest you read their tweet and respond accordingly.
The major problem with this form of advertising is that it takes a person with tact, diplomacy, and self control to do it right. If Twitter supports the '$1 / $$ message' universally it will attract many advertisers lacking any if all of those characteristics. That could result in a diluted user experience and eventual spamization of the system.
Still, in its purest form (and micro doses), this is a great way to perform grassroots marketing.