While Twitter struggles to find a business model, others are making hay while the sun shines. European company Magpie
has launched an ad network for Twitter which matches targeted
advertising — aka magpie-tweets — to participating Twitterers' tweet
streams. Advertisers pay Magpie for the tweets they send in the Twitter
user's name; Magpie pays the Twitter user for access to their friends
and followers, and the ads are prefaced by the #magpie hashtag to
clearly differentiate them from the user's normal updates. Anyone with
a PayPal account can play. If that sounds a bit confusing to imagine,
they've helpfully drawn a nice picture to explain how it works. 

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins at Mashable says: "The fact that just about anyone can make some serious money from doing
almost nothing … might overshadow the righteous indignation many
may feel about this. No one will get rich from this, but quite a few
folks might enjoy having an extra $50-$200 in their pocket at the end
of the month."

Rick Turoczy at ReadWriteWeb says: "Magpie is promoting the service as a way to get into the tweet stream of 'popular twitterers.' One has to wonder, if those Twitter users – especially those who are already seeing value in their Twitter use – are going to be willing to trade their influence for cash."

As Mark points out, Twitter CEO @ev dismissed a similar idea when it was raised at a Mashable focused discussion a while ago. Given Twitter's past form
though, it's entirely likely that if Magpie turns out to be a hit with
the punters, they'll rapidly rise to the top of Twitter's shopping
list.

I think you'll find it's pronounced 'Freemium'
In his Wired cover story, Chris Anderson writes with a sheen of optimism: "It's now clear that practically everything Web technology touches
starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are
concerned. Storage now joins bandwidth (YouTube: free) and processing
power (Google: free) in the race to the bottom. Basic economics tells
us that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost.
There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and
every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to
nothing."

Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carlson is only a little dismissive
of Anderson's thesis, saying: "Sorry Chris, but free is out again.
Thank economy-wary investors like Sequoia Capital, which terrified
its portfolio of startups with a 'RIP Good Times' earlier this month.
Startups 'need to become cash flow positive,' Sequoia declared. They
must recognize the 'need for profitability.' 'Cash is king.'

"Sequoia isn't the only VC firm preaching the precepts of profit, so
startups are starting to return to a business concept many thought had
faded into the past — asking customers to pay for things. Namely: Pro
accounts, plus accounts, premium features, enterprise editions, and
white label versions. This pleases us."

Carlson also lists a bundle of companies that already
have launched, are rumoured to be launching, or which Silicon Alley
Insider expects will launch pro accounts in the foreseeable future. 

TechCrunch UK does its bit for the economy
Mike Butcher today announced a new feature on TCUK — Send Me An Angel which, though it sounds plausibly like it could be an R&B hit tipped for the Christmas number one,
is thankfully a far nobler endeavour. Aimed at putting seed
investors in touch with the early stage start-ups that need them, the
feature will regularly profile angel investors in the tech space. The
first angel is Michael Smith, founder of Firebox.com and CEO of Mind Candy. We'll be watching this space with interest for the first marriage made in TechCrunch.

Friendfeed and Twitter combine to lower signal-to-noise ratio
Another new abuse
use for the Twitter API comes from Friendfeed, which as of yesterday is
giving its users the option of sharing their lifestream in its entirety
with Twitter. Mashable's Adam Ostrow is on the money when he says: "This could get annoying."

–Basheera Khan