Twitter as a marketplace

Did you know that you can tap into the awesome power of Twitter to attract people to your products and services? There's a service called Magpie that taps into people on Twitter to send messages to people who follow them. The interesting thing about Magpie is that it analyses the message streams of Titterers it uses so that any sponsored messages are contextually relevant to the people who follows them. This enables your messages to be targeted to a group who would be interested in something you are offering.

So, for example, if you are trying to sell an automated OS recovery package you probably wouldn't want to bother teenagers or moms with your message (or pay for their reading it), but would prefer to bring it to the attention of technical support staff or operational managers. Magpie lets you do this effectively without spending too much on your advertising; particularly as it's a new network so you don't have to bid against many advertisers at the moment.

Interesting concept, and one to watch as people try out different marketing techniques with new social networks.