Interesting use of a Twitterfeed to make money

It’s not exactly engagement or interaction, but women’s online publishing and advertising network Glam has been using a widget which allows manual editing of the Twitter feed around an event to ensure the content is suitable for advertisers (From Venturebeat).

The widget is available throughout the Glam network, and to third-party publishers, who receive a cut of any revenue. And soon even publishers outside the network will be able to receive micropayments via Paypal.

It’s a traditional model, but one which appears to have worked, at least for the #Oscars.

But it suffers from the traditional problem of display advertising – in which the amount of eyeballs doesn’t always translate to the amount of people actively clicking on an advert. Although the sponsorship in this case was for a skincare company, which is likely to appeal to a female-targetted content network, would positioning it next to Oscar content give it relevancy or credibility?

And what does it mean for people who use Twitter hashtags without the knowledge that another party may profit from them?

After all, they were originally used to collate information for aggregating information about fires in San Diego, and have since been used for collating conversation around disasters like #Mumbai along with mainstream entertainment and sporting events.

It raises the eternal content question of the internet – should aggregators be able to collect all the revenue without compensating the content creators?

Creative inspiration – interviews with TV writers

It’s easy to like Charlie Brooker for his ability to rip something apart in a suitably scathing way, but sometimes he also betrays himself by giving away insights into how to build something up in the first place.

Which is why I’ve spent a happy 50 minutes watching a Screenwipe episode in which he interviews some brilliant TV writers about how and why they write.

The writers are Russell T Davies (Doctor Who), Graham Linehan (Father Ted, the I.T Crowd), Paul Abbott (Shameless), Tony Jordan (Eastenders, Hustle), Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain (Peep Show), and Brooker himself wrote Dead Set, which is on Channel 4 at the moment.

Highly recommended for anyone doing anything creative – it’s inspirational, makes writing seem hard but possible, and helps remind everyone that there’s no set rule on how to do it, aside from hard work.

Sadly, the fact it’s on the otherwise brilliant iPlayer means:

  • I can’t embed it.
  • The chuffing thing will be gone in 5 days (or 30 if I download it).
  • The fact I want to watch it again and again in the future means some enterprising person will have to illegally steal it and distribute it.