VITweet

Little known fact: there are over 386 trillion “Tweet This” buttons on the internet today, and 6 billion more are being added every second.

OK, I totally made up that fact, but you don’t have to be a fictitious Portland hipster to know that almost every new piece of content has a precious little bird slapped on it.   However, even our founding fathers would have to admit that not all tweets are created equal.  Hypothetically speaking, let’s pretend for a moment that I’m a self-promotional blogger who can’t wait for the world to spread my bloggy goodness across the web faster than the fried shrimp runs out at an Old Country Buffet.  Given a choice, would I rather have 15 tweets from a couple of smoobies (social + media + noobies) or one tweet from someone who has 50,000 followers?

Today’s idea is a “Tweet This” plug-in that detects the Klout score of the reader and allows you to compensate influential users for tweeting our your content. Publishers would be able to add some cash to their account, and then set various thresholds for how much they are willing to offer people at various levels of influence.

For example, I may be willing to pay $1/tweet for people with 5,000 followers (or corresponding Klout scores), $5/tweet for people with 50,000 followers, and $25/tweet for uber-influencers with over 500,000 followers.  Influential Twitter users can visit the VITweet.com website to see which content providers are providing the highest bounties, and choose to tweet out the content that they want to share with their followers.

There are a few things I like about this idea.  For one, it fits in with the existing workflow of many sites.  There are tons of “Tweet This” buttons out there, and it would only take a few minutes to swap out existing buttons with a VITweet.  Second, there’s a very clear path to monetization (by taking a 5% cut of all payments).  Third, it allows people who have spent a long time building and curating a large social media following to unlock some of that value in an authentic way, by choosing to tweet out content that they think their followers would enjoy.

What do you guys think of this idea?  If you’ve got any thoughts on this one, post ‘em in the comments below.

I’m Back, Baby!

A day after my 28th birthday, I started this blog with a simple idea.  Each day I would post a new startup idea.  Exactly four years later, here we are.  Yesterday I hit the big 3-2, and I’ve made the decision to relaunch my blog.

As a cursory glance at the archive list to your right will tell you, I totally failed to keep to my daily promise, especially in the past year.  But, thanks to a little encouragement from a few friends, I decided to give it another go.

ASAD 2.0 will be similar to the original version, with one important difference.  A lot has happened over the past four years, and especially over the past 9 months.  Specifically, I made the huge leap from my comfy corporate life to the wild and wonderful world of startups.  It’s had a huge impact on the way that I think through ideas, evaluate opportunities, and ponder the real-world practicalities of bringing one of these bad boys to life.

I’ll be posting a few new startup ideas shortly, but if you’d like to hear more about what I’ve been up to lately, check out this awesome story that the talented James Gardner of the Seattle Met magazine wrote about me, this blog, and the entire Giant Thinkwell saga.  It’s been a fun ride and it’s insane to think that it all started here with a simple idea on this blog.  Stay tuned for some new ideas, and please let me know what you guys have been up to since I’ve been away in the comments below.