
Bill Gross is no stranger to good ideas and the IdeaLabs founder (and paid search guru) has what may well be another one. TweetUp, newly launched this past Sunday evening, is being hailed as something that may very well monetize search for Twitter. TweetUp is designed to work in conjunction with Twitter’s regular search function and provide results based on keyword searches. Gross delves into the story in-depth on a recent blog post and MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan also has written a terrific article covering this launch.
Sound farfetched? Well, the service is modeled after Google’s AdSense and AdWords programs, and you’d be hard pressed to call either of them bad ideas. This is something that I’d venture a guess that many folks will be watching with interest. I know that I will be.
Interested in exploring? Go to TweetUp and open an account. There is an incentive for the first 1,000 users, which provides them with a $100 credit for their involvement as beta testers of the service. By signing up, users are permitted to add search keywords to their profiles. The service essentially allows users to bid for their tweets rise to the top. Their success in that regard will be based on the relevance of their tweet, number of RTs it receives, as well as the number of followers and relative “influence” in the Twitterverse of that particular Twitter user.
Gross is well-respected in the online world and came up with the idea at a TED event just a few months ago. In pretty much the speed of light, he managed to raise some $3.5 million in funding, so I’d say that the idea definitely has legs. Or at least his investors thought so.
Check it out. I’d love to know what you think.