Comments on: Terrible Idea: Magpie Twitter Ad Network

By: BitTorrent

BitTorrent — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:03:32 +0000

@MikeBuechele
You ask, “Why is it fine to watch Tiger Woods sell cars in a commercial but we question a Tweeter sending a much more targeted and relevant tweet to their followers?”

My answer, “Who says I watch TV with commercials? TV on DVD, Hulu, or whatever. I try to keep all the commercials I view to a minimum because they’re often irrelevant to what I need/want.”

Web ads, I never mind because they don’t interfere with content and I can ignore it if they’re irrelevant (when I can’t, I quit visiting that site). That option, if I’m following someone who advertises is non-existent. If they advertise, I can either stop following them or stomach it. Following hundreds of people, cutting loose the ads isn’t a loss.

By: @MikeBuechele

@MikeBuechele — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:54:01 +0000

How is giving your followers relative information spam? If you are a vegan blogger and you send a tweet about the new Angus burger at a steak house then you are spamming. If you send a tweet about a new veggie fast food place then you are adding value to your community. I agree with others that disclosure is key, but if the message ads value then it’s not spam. Why is it fine to watch Tiger Woods sell cars in a commercial but we question a Tweeter sending a much more targeted and relevant tweet to their followers? Arrington was wrong about IZEA and the market is showing that this post may be wrong about a Twitter CPM ad network.

By: @MyNetView

@MyNetView — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 11:18:37 +0000

I dont use magpie, but i think it is an interesting way and gives twitter itself more chances to earn money. If they would take $5 per month for an account and i earn it with Magpie everything is right. I only have seen magpie ad and it was for the iPhone contract free. We should wait a time before we judge.

By: LearnedToLate

LearnedToLate — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:28:52 +0000

I just started a magpie ad three days ago. Thought is was a fun idea…..until I saw that every ‘ad’ had the #magpie on it. Thus making it a totally obvious ad instead of the faux word of mouth they made it out to be.

Going to run the ad till my money runs out, since they sure as hell aren’t going to give it back to me.

Oh well.

By: VE

VE — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:07:28 +0000

I signed up with Magpie to become a publisher with my erotic twitter account.

Subsequently a follower signed up to add a campaign and after depositing $107 he was told that his campaign was against their terms and conditions due to the website he was advertising having an adult nature. His site isn’t full on pornographic, if anything it is erotic art.

Anyway, Magpie won’t refund his money, instead they are keeping hold of it should he want to do a different campaign.

Magpie subsequently left my account untouched, which also goes against their T&C’s due to its adult nature.

You have to ask yourself why didn’t they close my account straight away so that a situation like this could have been avoided?
If I hadn’t closed my account, they no doubt would have told me when it came time to post my earnings cheque that I’m not having it due to going against their T&C’s.

My follower is currently trying to get his money refunded with the help of Paypal and this should be a warning to all potential publishers and advertisers.

Magpie is unethical in my opinion and I too will block every follower who has signed up to become a publisher.

By: Anna

Anna — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:54:41 +0000

A few things that I didn’t see mentioned in this post, and some points I want to make:
1. There is a setting on magpie that allows you to approve an ad before it gets posted on twitter.
2. Magpie is actually very good about posting ads that are relevant to what you twitter anyway, which is why so many new magpies wait days before they see an ad, even if they twitter a lot.
3. Many, MANY twitter users use twitter to promote their own private businesses and services (etsy, loli, artfire, etc). I don’t think it’s fair to drop followers just because they’re trying to promote their business in a personal manner. They “spam”, hoping to draw traffic to their shops. Is that so terrible?
4. I get a lot of my news from the automated twitterfeeds I follow. This is spammy, but I enjoy it. I know that others do too.

There are ways to block magpie feeds if they really bother you that darn much, but I don’t think it’s fair to totally drop a follower just because they use magpie.

By: Wendy Cholbi

Wendy Cholbi — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:29:03 +0000

I agree that magpie is a terrible idea, and I'm willing to unfollow those who use it (yes, I have actually done that). Stuart Robertson has written a magpie-blocking script called (gotta love it) Scarecrow, which you can use if you use Firefox (and Greasemonkey). Tweetdeck has a "filter" function that you can use to screen out incoming tweets that have the magpie hashtag (although recent rumors are that magpie is now allowing ad tweets WITHOUT the hashtag, which is a horrible idea on top of a terrible one).

By: Josh Catone

Josh Catone — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 01:53:09 +0000

@d: As I said in the post:

Magpie, on the other hand, deals with Twitter, which is much higher volume then blog publishing. It is not uncommon for a Twitter user to see hundreds or thousands of tweets stream by from the people they follow each day. Imagine if 20% (the Magpie default) of that content was ads. The noise level is just way, way too high.

By: d

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:42:06 +0000

Why is having ads on your site okay but Magpie isn’t? I don’t see a difference.

By: joaquin_win

joaquin_win — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:55:25 +0000

I’d block you