The Tweet Fee

Have you ever received a personal email from Ashton Kutcher? Neither have I. I do, however, along with 87,000 or so other people, follow Ashton's tweets. He just likes to say hi, or talk about the noisy construction coming from his neighbor's house, or ruminate on the Lakers chances in the playoffs. Just chit-chatty kind of stuff, but I have really gotten hooked on seeing what this guy has going on. I almost feel like we are pals. It's gotten to the point where one of the main reasons I access Twitter is to catch up with my bud.
Now consider that Twitter, which is currently talking with Google about partnering up, is in the elusive business of making serious money from a social networking site. No media company is completely sure how to do that yet, but they know it involves getting ads in some form in front of viewers, without alienating the viewers to the extent that they go to another site. To achieve this the viewer must not feel she is being sold a product, but rather is sharing a lifestyle with a friend. Thus, rather than put ads on existing shows, or product endorsements on other people's movies, advertisers are looking for situations in which their products are shown as being seamlessly part of the lives of public figures.
Pair up this trend with the amazing ability of Ashton to draw people to Twitter. His micro-blog of 140 characters of content is a major selling vehicle if Twitter can figure out how to fit an ad facing on a tweet entry. What form would
this ad take? A link at the bottom of the tweet to an ad display on the cell phone? A direct product endorsement from Ashton in his tweet? The real breakthrough has already been made: through the combo of the human attraction to techy devices, an attraction which movie stars share with the rest of us, and the speedy sharing of your 'personal' life that Twitter allows, the ad industry can now draw on a direct relationship between celebrity endorser and consumer. Taking advantage of the interchange will be relatively simple.
Once it is shown that an endorsement on Twitter by a celebrity does boost product sales, the floodgates will be open. Soon to follow: Angelina Jolie tweets about the challenges of getting through airports with eight or ten or so children (a small icon will be flashing on the bottom of the screen that the follower can click in order to see an ad for a nine child collapsible baby stroller); Orlando Bloom tweets about the difficulty of learning how to shoot a bow and arrow again after a lapse of five years leading up to the making of 'Lord of the Rings: IV'. The standard contract will be x number of millions for x number of tweets a day from the celebrity. An interesting ethical question: whereas the public has long since stopped caring whether celebrities actually use the products they endorse, will it be considered unethical for celebrities to take money from Twitter and then have an assistant do the tweeting?

Andrew Grossman is a business owner, columnist, writer, cartoonist and online content business expert. His online column, Daily Content Comment, can be found at www.andrewgrossman.net. DCC provides up-to-the-moment info on business partnerships, technology breakthroughs and copyright law rulings and their effect on the online content business.

Andrew Grossman was one of the pioneers of the online business model for selling creative content. In 2000, he launched CartoonResource.com, a cartoon licensing agency. With a worldwide clientele in print, presentation and advertising media, CartoonResource.com helped show that online content was profitable.

In 2008 he purchased rights to several creative content databases, and created
AllContentNetwork.com. ACN syndicates popular features such as the advice column,
'I Fought the Law' and the social networking comic, 'letsCu'.

His articles on the online sales model have appeared in Folio, Editor & Publisher, Brandweek, Barrons, The Wall Street Journal and other titles. His cartoons have appeared in thousands of newspapers, magazines and book collections around the world, including The New Yorker, Stern, The Washington Post and Mainichi Daily News.