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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. (more…)

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Paul Graham of Y Combinator is putting on an event called AngelConf that hopes to show prospective tech and business investors how it all comes together. The event will be held on March 5th at Y Combinator’s office in Mountain View, Ca. and will be free of charge, although you’ll need to request an invitation from its homepage.

Silicon Valley has many wealthy tech veterans eager to try their hand at funding a new startups. Unfortunately, most never get off the ground due to the complexity of the business. Graham believes only a small fraction of people capable of investing actually do so. And he’s found through experience that the number of startups emerging is directly related to the amount of angel funding available. Even a slight boost in the number of angel investors could be a boon to the startup community as a whole, especially in light of the economy.

According to the conference’s website AngleConf will bring together some of the Valley’s most prominent investors and hopefully help give rise to a new wave of startups. Some of the questions the gathering aims to answer will be; how much are you supposed to invest, what legal agreements do you need, where do you find startups to invest in, and ultimately, how do you pick winners?

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Back when the Internet was young there were all sorts of schemes to monetize content and sell digital goods. One of the most talked about was the concept of micro-payments, where users would be charged incrementally based on how much content they consumed.

The idea never really caught on. And ever since, micro-payments have remained on the back burner for a host of reasons, including lame technology, lack of interest from big media and the difficulty convincing consumers to pay for info in a “nickel and dime” fashion.

But content has a long history of being paid for by end-users (magazines, books, etc.). And in today’s challenging ad environment, coupled with the realization that almost all media is (or will soon be) digital and interactive, publishers are again looking at micro-payments as a way to shore up diminishing bottom lines.

SILICON ALLEY INSIDER had an interesting piece yesterday on a number of media veterans who’ve come around to the conclusion that some type micro-payment solution has to be included in the mix—as well as a number of other observers who think it will never happen.

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Robert Scoble has an interesting article about Brownbook.net paying users to add data to their business directory.

Here’s an exerpt;

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Dave Ingram, CEO of Brownbook.net, had a business problem: how can he build a world-wide business directory, but one with much more up to date info than any database that exists so far?

Well, he’s paying people who add data. He and co-founder Marc Lyne explains how it works in this video.

Already they are seeing 40% growth per month and tons of new businesses added all over the world. Can’t argue with that.

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The information below was taken from a review by Mashable which can be seen at this link—Make Money Online With Bukisa | The Startup Review

Bukisa is a one stop shop for how-to, informational & educational content. We are both an aggregator and a UGC website. We provide content in the form of articles, videos, presentations, audio recordings and image slideshows.

Bukisa’s contributors enjoy not only the publicity, but also revenue sharing of ads placed on their content. A contributor can invite friends and colleagues to create their own content on Bukisa, thus creating their own personal Bukisa network.

A user that owns a network will not only enjoy the revenue sharing of their work, but will also profit from their network friends’ revenue sharing.

Mashable’s Take

Built in a vein similar to that of Associated Content, et al., Bukisa is designed to be as easy for content creators to use as it is for consumers. Want to share a lesson for a certain task, be it a “fix-it” explainer or a construction project? How about a beginner’s course on a certain piece of technology? Bukisa allows you to do just that, in word, photo and video.

The learning curve for Bukisa is very light. Most every feature is intuitive to use, and the layout – from the front page to each article – is quite smart. Categories are in clear view and are fairly extensive, and things like the popular topics window, columns for popular posts, and things recently added seem to be well placed. Visitors might prefer that Bukisa deliver a larger amount of content right from the top level, but I’d grade it a B+ or an A- to start.

It’s also a treat to see the service clearly delineate its Bukisa Index statistic. Without going into too much detail, the number shown is what users can expect insofar as financial returns go for every 1,000 unique visits registered. Currently the Index stands at 4.20, which means users can gather $4.20 per mille if in fact they manage to secure the necessary reader figure(s). If Bukisa’s popularity grows, the Index is likely to rise as well. (According to site copy, any changes made to the Index are seen roughly every four weeks.)

That’s not all. Bukisa also involves a friendly dimension in its payment system. If you invite friends to join you on the network, and they themselves begin to produce content that generates traffic that too results in revenue, you yourself will see income to the tune of a 25% bonus. And if those friends then invite other contacts, who in turn deliver popular material, you’ll see one-sixteenth of their total revenue. So if your respective social circles are especially prolific, and both short-term and long-term traffic data is high, you could very well see ample and steady cash sent your way.

Of course, this is all in an effort to establish a bustling community of content creators, and hinges on a great amount of visitors regularly passing in and out of the space. Which is hardly guaranteed. But that’s the way syndication services function. And if we’re to consider which direction Bukisa is headed, the foundation upon which users can grow their brands looks like a good one. Keep an eye on the Index, we say. It’s bound to climb in the months ahead.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable – The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

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Interesting TechCrunch report on web video revenues.

Online Video: Where’s The Money?

Here is the stark reality of online video: nobody is making much money and the enthusiastic projections for online video advertising going from $500 million in 2008 to more than $5 billion in five years will undoubtedly be pared back in the coming weeks as analysts revisit their numbers. (Those numbers are from August—eMarketer).

The writing is already on the wall. YouTube is resorting to selling off video search results to the sexiest bidder and just today announced that it is extending overlay ads in YouTube Partner videos to embedded videos on other sites (previously these would only show up on YouTube itself). It is pulling out all the stops to try to get those revenues flowing. Meanwhile, smaller video startups such as Veoh and Revsion3 have already cut back on staff and shows in order to survive. So you can throw this slide out the window:

- [Read more]

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