The Business And Technology Network

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TechCrunch is reporting on a new Twitter service called called Super Chirp that lets Twitter users get paid for their content. According to the blog, Super Chirp uses Twitter’s private message system allowing publishers to leverage their existing Twitter accounts to promote their paid streams. Users can subscribe via the Super Chirp site, pay with Paypal, and then get messages via DM. They can also just visit Super Chirp to see all those paid messages, and sort them by publisher.

Publishers can set their prices between $0.99 and $9.99 per month. Super Chirp keeps 30% of the gross, including Paypal fees, so publishers get to keep a full 70% of the proceeds. However,  there’s been speculation that this is exactly the type of thing that Twitter itself should be doing, so if Twitter launches something like this on its own, Super Chirp (and any other knock-off services) could become irrelevant very quickly.

There has been a lot of talk that something like this will be a big boon to celebrities and sports figures with large numbers of followers. And there is no doubt there is probably a big market for pay-per celeb-based content. However, in my mind,  a far more intriguing application for readers of bizandtech.net is the monetization of valuable premium content for niche audiences as evidenced by stock trader Timothy Sykes usage of the new service.

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Super Chirp: Making It Simple For People To Get Paid For Their Tweets (paidcontent.org)

Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp (techcrunch.com)

At the annual BookExpo convention in New York City over the weekend, Google said it plans to introduce a program that would enable writers and publishers to sell digital versions of their books directly to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device.

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The announcement is sure to be applauded by publishers who have long had problems with Amazon’s low-priced strategy for e-books. Kindle editions of most new best sellers go for $9.99, a lot less than the $25 to $35 at which publishers sell new hardcovers in bookstores. Google has said it will allow publishers to set their own prices.

In addition, Google would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. This alone could give Google a huge advantage since the company already has 1.5 million public-domain books available for reading on cellphones and the Sony Reader.

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Google says it will challenge Amazon on electronic books (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Google Promises Publishers (And Amazon) Will Sell E-Books In 2009 (paidcontent.org)
Google Plans to Sell eBooks By the End of 2009 [Google] (gizmodo.com)
E-Books: Google Versus Amazon (q-ontech.blogspot.com)
Preparing to Sell E-Books, Google Takes on Amazon (nytimes.com)
Google to Cut the E-Book Middleman (mashable.com)