Popular Twitter users such as actor Ashton Kutcher or CNN can start earning money from posting content on the micro blogging site after a technology company launched a subscription service called Super Chirp.
Created by software firm 83 Degrees, Super Chirp is a system that allows any Twitter user to earn revenue through direct messages, Twitter's private message system. The Twitter user can set up a Pay-Pal-based subscription to their account through the Super Chirp site, setting a price of between $0.99 and $9.99 per month.
Direct messages that they upload onto the site are then sent exclusively to all of their subscribers. The subscribers receive the direct messages or "chirps" in their Twitter account, but they can also visit the Super Chirp site to see all of their paid messages, and sort them by publisher. Creator 83 Degrees said on its blog: "Our hope is that Super Chirp will provide a means for people to quickly and easily enable pay-for information channels.
"These could be celebrity news updates, real-time data, or charitable micro-giving.
"Internally, we are calling them 'paid streams' -- if you have something to say that others might find valuable, then Super Chirp can let you try out your business premise." According to TechCrunch, 83 Degrees will take a 30% cut from each subscription, part of which goes to PayPal to pay its fees. Therefore the publisher of the content receives 70% of the earnings. For Twitter users like Kutcher (aplusk), who has almost 2.1m followers, or CNN Breaking News (cnnbrk), which has 1.7m, Super Chirp could be a very profitable revenue stream. Super Chirp is not the first paid content system to be developed for Twitter. A similar service called TwitPub already exists, however it makes publishers create a new subscription-based Twitter account, and Super Chirp does not.
