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Magpie has been acquired by IZEA

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:21:45 GMT

Posted by Jan on July 19, 2011

We are excited to announce that Magpie has been acquired by IZEA. Based in sunny Florida, U.S.A., IZEA are leaders in sponsored conversations. They’ve built numerous platforms which connect brands and influencers on different levels and all kinds of social networks. Today, Magpie is joining IZEA and our network will be merged with their Sponsored Tweets service.

Sponsored Tweets will be the new home for all Magpie advertisers and twitterers. Our teams have been working hard behind the scenes to make your transition as smooth as possible and just today, all Magpie accounts have been transferred, including their respective account balances.

This means that starting today and no matter if you’re an advertiser or a twitterer, you will able to use your existing Magpie credentials to log on to SponsoredTweets and access your account.

Advertisers, please login here using your Magpie credentials: https://app.sponsoredtweets.com/login

Twitterers, simply use your Twitter credentials for login: https://app.sponsoredtweets.com/connect

Your Magpie credentials will continue to work on be-a-magpie.com for a while for you to verify your account and balance have been moved over correctly. You will not be able to make deposits or withdrawals at Magpie, neither will you be able to create new campaigns or accept tweets. Please use the Sponsored Tweets platform for this from today on.

As many of you may remember, Magpie has started 3 years ago as the first service to offer in-stream ads on Twitter. With your participation and feedback, we have developed a vital marketplace connecting twitterers and advertisers. We have truly enjoyed this journey and thank you all for your support. We are grateful for these past 3 years and will miss you guys! When we decided we needed to move on to something new, we took the time to talk with many companies who were a potential new home for Magpie. We decided in favor of IZEA because we are certain that you will have as much fun and success with SponsoredTweets as you had with Magpie.

We wish you guys all the best. Thanks again for having been part of this!

Boris & Jan

Change is coming!

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:14:00 GMT

Posted by Jan on July 17, 2011

We’re really excited about Tuesday! Tuesday, we will be able to announce something really awesome, we’ve been working on for the past few months.

There isn’t much to say for now, it’s still a secret, but mark your calendars, folks! Tuesday will be legen…wait for it…dairy!

(“Change” image by David Reece on Flickr)

Twitter turns 5 (and Magpie turns 3 soon!)

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:26:04 GMT

Posted by Jan on June 28, 2011

This is amazing. I vividly remember reading the blog post on Techcrunch whose title read “Is Twttr interesting” at first and was then renamed to “Odeo Releases Twttr”. I was an intern at a large Silicon Valley software company at the time. Of course, I created an account as soon as I could get my hand on it. But Twttr (as it was called at the time) was totally different from what it is today. It was centered mainly around text messages. In the early days, you could send and receive tweets on your phone via text messages – yep, that’s 5 years ago!

It wasn’t until the SXSW festival of 2007 that Twitter really got traction and much has changed since those early days. In October 2008, Boris and I created Magpie, and what started out as a side-project soon became our big thing. Now, Twitter has over 200 million users and Magpie reaches almost 38 million followers. We’re running campaigns for companies like Sony Playstation, Deutsche Post, and Hersheys and we’ve become the ad agency, we had never dreamt to be.

I can’t find another word but – amazing. Thanks y’all for being part of this.

Welcome Google Germany!

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 19:54:54 GMT

Posted by Jan on April 02, 2011

A warm welcome to Google Germany, our latest Magpie advertiser.

Together with them, we’re running a campaign for Google AdWords which we are particularly proud of because AdWords and Magpie are two great complementary ways of creating brand awareness and real web site traffic.

Magpie Twitterers from Germany, check your accounts, tweets like this are probably already waiting for you:

#werbung Gefunden werden, wenn die Zielgruppe sucht: #Google #AdWords jetzt mit 50,- € Startguthaben! http://bit.ly/AdWordsGuthabenless than a minute ago via Magpie Advertising Network Favorite Retweet ReplyNadine
PimpYourMac

Enjoy!

Why we're looking to sell Magpie

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:37:45 GMT

Posted by Jan on August 12, 2010

Today is Magpie’s 2nd birthday. On August 12th 2008, we’ve launched the private beta for the World’s first in-stream advertising business on Twitter. It was actually based on an idea I had back in May 2008, and with the help of my partner Boris and our very talented summer interns Cornelius, Benjamin, and Daniel, we built its first version in less than three months.

Two years later, Magpie is Europe’s #1 Twitter advertising network with a combined reach of almost 20 Million followers and about 5,000 registered advertisers, among them renowned brands such as Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, Burger King, Snickers, Honda, Audi, Mazda, Heineken, Bacardi, Deutsche Post, Hersheys. The list goes on.

How did we get here? When we started in 2008, the idea was quite simple: match up advertisers with twitterers based on text and topic recognition algorithms, throw in some AdSense-like bidding logic and you get a self-service in-stream ad network for Twitter. In the very first version of Magpie, we had it all figured out: payment, the bidding algorithms, connection to the Twitter API, keyword and campaign setup, and even click tracking. As I said, Magpie was self-service since the beginning, and everything was built to work automatically and without human intervention.

At first, we had the same teething troubles as many young startups: nobody really paid attention to Magpie. This is when we realized the true potential of Magpie: we started to use our own product and ran campaigns for Magpie itself. Suddenly, a lot of twitterers picked up the news in no time. They discussed the idea, signed up and spread the word amongst their friends. Our signups skyrocketed over night. In the blink of an eye we had built a considerable user base.

Ever since these first days, we’ve basically become an online marketing agency. From building software and running servers, we had to wrap our heads around pitching to clients, setting up campaigns, defining media strategies, and distributing advertising budgets. We have really enjoyed working with both advertisers and twitterers over the last two years and we’ve met an enormous number of creative, bright and just generally great people on our way. I think I can say that we’ve also become quite successful in what we’re doing.

However, after two years now, we’ve come to a point where we would like to move on. In our hearts, we’re still software engineers and great technology is what makes us tick. We have a new idea in our heads and there will be great things to come.

We have decided to sell the company in order to focus on this idea, and we’re taking offers now. To make this very clear: we know that we have only seen the dawn of social media marketing, and we continue to believe in the huge potential of Magpie. To any buyer who understands online advertising, Magpie will be of enormous value. If we do not get a reasonable offer by someone who is willing to take good care of Magpie, treat our twitterers and our advertisers with respect and provide great customer service, we will continue to run Magpie. Putting it up for sale does not mean that we do not believe in the idea anymore; we just don’t want to do things halfway.

So what exactly are we putting up for sale? As I said, we need to focus on our new project, so you won’t be acquiring a company with employees. However, you do get the software, servers, databases, the Magpie domains and brand which will give you the ability to operate the Magpie advertising network and possibly build something much bigger. Here are some of our numbers from the last 30 days:

- 4,704 registered advertisers with many European and U.S. brands, agencies and smaller businesses
- 19,864,624 followers combined reach from a thoroughly vetted twitterer user base
- 116 actively running campaigns
- 14,852 Magpie tweets served
- 21,286,338 ad impressions

If you can make a serious offer – either in cash or equity – and if you are willing to keep Magpie alive and running in some meaningful form, maintaining a high level of integrity and continuing to provide value to the Twitter ecosystem as a whole, please contact us. I will be in San Francisco Bay Area from August 15th through 28th. If you would like to meet, just send me a short email to jan (at) be-a-magpie (dot) com.

Go-Ahead for Magpie's In-Stream Advertising

Mon, 31 May 2010 19:18:07 GMT

Posted by Jan on May 31, 2010

Twitter’s New Terms Have Been Subject to Massive Misunderstandings

The past week has seen the Twitter community abuzz following the announcement by Twitter COO Dick Costolo regarding changes in the terms of service. Blogs and other media outlets were quick to proclaim the demise of in-stream advertising, which we were first to introduce in 2008 and have been running successfully since then. It now seems, however, that these commentators were a little too quick off the mark.

Ryan Sarver, Director of Platform at Twitter, has now shed light upon the matter. In a recent mailing list comment, he clarifies the intentions of Twitter: “I want to make sure this part is clear — this policy change isn’t meant to say that we are going to start policing if the content of something a user tweets is an ad or not.” The initial statement by Dick Costolo, which many people found somewhat vague and brought about uncertainty in the entire industry (including us), has thereby been put more into perspective.

Our business as Magpie, an Advertising Network, is to connect twitterers and advertisers in order to create relevant, controlled and individualized sponsored conversations in a mutually beneficial partnership. With regards to such a model, Ryan Sarver continued in his post, giving the following example: “So if Liz is paid by Reebok to tweet about how much she loves their new shoes, we are not going to be policing that any more than we were on Friday. This policy also does not prohibit services […] that help facilitate those relationships or even help her post the ads to her timeline on her behalf.”

The question remaining is: which kinds of services are going to be forbidden by the new terms of service? It appears that Twitter client applications, rather than ad networks are targeted by Dick Costolo’s recent post. Ryan Sarver emphasizes this by further explaining: “It does prohibit an application from calling out to a service to find an ad to serve to Liz that will get inserted into the timeline she is viewing.”

We appreciate that Twitter has made the changes in policy more explicit and comprehensible and perfectly understand Dick’s concerns about the long-term health of Twitter as a platform. We totally agree that every third party must add value to the system. The idea of Magpie is to reward Twitter users for the valuable content they contribute to the network. In turn we enable prestigious brands such as Audi, Sony Playstation, or Bacardi as well as some 2,000 smaller and medium-sized businesses to participate and engage in social media.

Being a member of WOMMA (the Word of Mouth Marketing Association), Magpie is a first-mover in ethical and responsible word of mouth micro-blogging. As such, Magpie twitterers and advertisers needn’t be concerned, as Magpie’s tweets have long been fully disclosed and strictly compliant with the FTC rules.

Head wind for Magpie?

Thu, 27 May 2010 18:57:19 GMT

Posted by Boris on May 27, 2010

You may have heard about Twitter’s announcement and that they are going to update their terms of service for developers and plan on prohibiting third-party advertising networks and developers from inserting ads into a user’s stream. We are in the course of evaluating how this situation affects Magpie.

We are convinced that we’re not in the wrong here: the Magpie model successfully demonstrates how Twitter advertising works in a fair and prosperous partnership between twitterers and advertisers while adding real value to the Twitter ecosystem by rewarding great content contributors for their work.

We will keep you posted on this matter, thanks for your patience.

WOMMA's Guide to Disclosure in Social Media Marketing

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:36:46 GMT

Posted by Jan on February 18, 2010

The WOMMA Guide to Disclosure in Social Media Marketing is out. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is a nonprofit organization fostering the discipline of credible word of mouth marketing. After the FTC’s announcements regarding the new endorsement guidelines, WOMMA members from a large number of companies from all fields of WOM have been sticking their heads together to come up with a specific recommendation on how the FTC’s requirements should be implemented.

The resulting guide has been published yesterday. I am proud that we at Magpie are the very first to enable all our users to be compliant with the new guide without having to do any extra work.

The Requirements

Regarding sponsored conversations on microblogs such as Twitter, the guide requires two things: use one out of the three possible hashtags #spon, #paid, and #samp, and a prominent link to a Disclosure and Relationships Statement page which explains how twitterers work with companies in accepting compensation and/or reviewing products.

How they are implemented

The use of disclosing hashtags has been mandatory on Magpie for a long time. Until now, we allowed our users to choose from a set of different disclosure options, according to each twitterer’s personal taste. Among those options were #sponsrd, #advert, ad:, sponsor: etc. As of today, we have consolidated these options and merely allow to choose between #spon and #paid. For campaigns which involve free samples which can be reviewed by twitterers, we will occasionally allow #samp as well.

The disclosure statement isn’t entirely new to Magpie either. All Magpie tweets have been carrying a source parameter named Magpie Advertising Network which linked to our web site, in order for people to learn about how Magpie works. To further comply with the new guide, we’ve installed a standardized Disclosure and Relationships Statement page and changed our source parameter, so that every Magpie tweet is directly linking to it. This way, followers can easily learn about how Magpie users are using sponsored conversations. And the good news is: twitterers don’t have to change a thing — it’s all automatically taken care of by Magpie.

To see this sample Magpie tweet live and try out the new source parameter, click here first and then on Magpie Advertising Network when you see the tweet in your browser.

I would love your feedback on this. Do you think our implementation will be helpful for twitterers, followers and advertisers? Do you have suggestions for improvement?

A warm welcome to our 2,000th Customer!

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:18:08 GMT

Posted by Jan on February 01, 2010

Today, the team at Magpie is celebrating their 2,000th customer. Magpie has been an amazing journey so far and a little over one year after our launch in late 2008, we’re thrilled to welcome our 2,000th (paying) customer.

We’re especially happy to see another small business use Magpie for successful social media marketing. This (and many others among the other 1,999) are proof that our larger brand clients such as Sony Playstation, Heineken, Tetrapak, hershey’s and Deutsche Post aren’t the only ones to run successful Magpie campaigns. Our 2,000th customer is the Valley Dev Team a three-man iPhone development shop from Europe. They’re the authors of the popular iPhone sports apps iSkate and B.iCycle (the GPS cycling computer, as seen on FOXNews) and tell us that so far they’re having great results with Magpie campaigns linking to their apps in the iTunes store.

Thanks, Valley Dev Team, for choosing Magpie!

Introducing improved click tracking

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:00:13 GMT

Posted by Jan on November 24, 2009

As of today, we’re moving from our own click tracking algorithms to using bit.ly, Twitter’s favorite link shortening and reporting service. Using bit.ly gives both you and us the opportunity to track clicks in a concise and correct way, and also provides some added bonus for users who have their own bit.ly account. More about this in a minute.

For you, this change means the following:

If you have been using plain, regular, non-shortened links in your campaigns (i.e. no tinyurls, no budurls, no cli.gs, etc.), everything remains the same. Instead of the system automatically shortening your links with id.gd, it will now utilize bit.ly and you will see the same stats in your Magpie account as previously.

If you have been using bit.ly (or j.mp) links with Magpie, click tracking has been temporarily disabled without disruption to your campaigns. If you would like to re-activate Magpie’s tracking, we kindly ask you to update your campaigns and replace your bit.ly links by the regular, plain long link your bit.ly is pointing to – don’t worry, we will convert them back into bit.ly links when we publish them on Twitter. Next, enter your bit.ly username and your bit.ly API key within your Settings in Magpie. This way, you will have both the analytics provided by Magpie and bit.ly, all fueled with the same data from your bit.ly account. You can find your API key in the Account section after logging in to bit.ly. If you’d rather use bit.ly only and are not interested in Magpie’s analytics, you need not do anything.

If you have been using shortlinks from services other than bit.ly and j.mp (e.g. tinyurl, budurl, cli.gs, etc.), click tracking has been temporarily disabled without disruption to your campaigns. This provides you with the opportuntity to elect which reporting approach you prefer. Link shortening services consider the chaining of shortlinks (e.g. bit.ly to budurl to cli.gs to your site) as suspicious, because spammers are using this to disguise their links. Of course, we’re not falling into that category, but this means that you cannot use Magpie’s bit.ly-based tracking and other services together. But that isn’t a problem. If you’re using a link shortening service, that provides great statistics, you can of course continue doing so (and please let us know why you like it, so we can learn things, too!). However, you will not be able to obtain any reporting through your Magpie Account. On the other hand, if you prefer Magpie’s analytics, please use plain long links in your Magpie campaigns, and everything will work like it did before.

Why we made this change, and what’s in it for you, you might ask? Building Magpie and providing the best and most successful Twitter Advertising network out there is a very demanding job, and we take pride in delivering top notch innovations for you and responding quickly to all the great ideas and feedback we get. But being great at one thing also means to be able to focus, and not get distracted by other things. bit.ly are great (possibly the greatest) at click tracking, so we decided to let them excel at what they know best: the tracking. I believe, it’s a win-win for both our twitterers and our customers.

Here’s a screenshot of some of bit.ly’s statistics screens:

Of course and as always – we love to hear your feedback, your comments and ideas. I will make sure the good stuff gets into the next release of Magpie.