Magpie is a third party Twitter related service that allows ads to enter the Twitterverse through your own tweets. Through this, you can make money. It's a basic, time-honored trade in the blogosphere. The problem is, Twitter has yet to see monitization occur. Thus far, Magpie commercial tweets seem against the spirit of the free Twitter service.

The Main Reason NOT to join Magpie

Many prominent and prolific twitterers are unified against Magpie: they hate it with the force of a thousand suns and threaten to unfollow anyone daring to show a #magpie tweet.

What You Should Do About It

• If you are concerned about losing followers, the word on the scene is to steer clear of the Magpie game. Keep your eyes open.
  
  See if people actually ARE losing followers, and in what kinds of numbers. It may be that people will simply learn to mentally screen out the #magpie tweets and it will all blow over. It may be that Mapgie users lose followers in droves. It's simply too soon to tell.
  
  
• If you really don't care if you lose followers, you can certainly jump in while it's still early with Magpie, as an experiment. Who knows if anyone will actually cash out? One has to earn 50 pounds (UK) to see a payment from PayPal. Your tweets may not contain enough ad-related keywords to ever see a payout. So consider if the process is worth your time as an early adopter.
  
  
• If you are ambivalent about the whole thing, or perhaps just feeling cynical, you can wait the whole thing out. See if Magpie crashes and burns. See if people are giggling all the way to the bank with their new found millions.
  

What I am Doing About Magpie

My initial reaction to hearing about this commercial service was to steer clear. Then I saw how much money Magpie promises one can earn. In the interests of research (and some small measure of avarice), I took a deep breath...and signed up. I allowed for one Magpie message to emerge for every five tweets from me.

Three days and many tweets later, only two #magpie tweets have appeared live. Both are ads about laptops. Actually, it's the same ad twice. I have made 1.80 pounds so far. I lost a handful of followers, but also gained some (I usually gain about 3-13 new followers a day naturally as I go about my Twitter existence).

Early Conclusions about Magpie

• I should have earned more money in three days, as my ratio of 5:1 seems to be ignored by Magpie. In other words, I should have hosted more #magpie tweets than two based on my rate of twittering. I don't know if there are bugs in the Magpie system, or if they won't send through a #magpie if you don't have enough keywords to relate to their available ads.
  
  
• I have not yet lost followers "in droves." My net result between gaining and losing followers is about zero. Yet, with only two #magpie tweets posted at this point, that is hardly a large enough sample to report on! I did get a Direct Message on Twitter asking what a #magpie is, so people ARE noticing and wondering.

That is all I can speculate on with Magpie this early on. Will I EVER cash out? Will I survive the mass follower exodus to emerge with millions of pounds sterling? Stay tuned.

If you are brave enough to sign up for Magpie, I'd love to hear your experiences with it! Here is a link you can cut and paste to let you explore this service on your own: http://be-a-magpie.com/l9em1i