Whether you’ve gained them by being mentioned in one of Kim Kardashian’s tweets, grew them naturally or bought them from us, if you’re on Twitter you will likely have some followers. No matter how many followers you might have, there’s probably one thing you may not have considered: how much those little digital connections are worth to you.

And no, I’m not talking about on a sentimental emotional level, I’m talking about how much they could be worth to you in cold hard simoleans. Why would you want to know this? Well, there are loads of people who will buy Twitter accounts which are proven to convert sales, or you may just want to know because you’re a pedantic, money-hungry accountant-type who needs to know how everything in your experience is worth.

Whatever the reason, in this post we’re going to take an in-depth look at how much your Twitter followers could be worth, and what that could mean to you.

But before we do, let’s look at the people on Twitter and how you probably fit in the grand scheme of things.

There are three main types of people on Twitter: Firstly, you have Celebrities looking to boost their egos in a war to become one of the most-followed people on the site. Secondly, you have an average human Internet-user who just uses the site to tell their close circle of friends when they’re taking a dump (I like to call these the ‘Normals’). And if you can’t fit into one of those categories, you’re simply using Twitter as a marketing medium to make money from.

And in case you haven’t yet figured out from the vast amount of spam and promotional messages floating around the site like a digital version of Rosie O’Donnell in a bath of chunky soup, marketers form probably the dominant category of people on the site. And if you’re reading this post on a marketing blog, you are either a ‘net-tard who accidentally found this site while looking for pornography, or you belong to this group as well.

As a marketer, you’ll know that a Twitter account is effectively like having a mailing list to connect with your clients and friends and there are various factors which will sway how profitable your list will be to you. For example, if your entire list was gained as a result of giving away a freebie, the people on it won’t be as likely to buy something from you as a list of people who are previous clients who have already bought your services.

It’s these variables which should be taken into account when estimating the value of your Twitter account and I’ve listed some of the most common below:

1. Acquisition

How did you gain your Twitter followers? If they were gained through natural traffic to your Twitter page by people interested in you and what you have to say, sent from your blog or website, or purchased from uSocial in targeted packages, then chances are they’ll be worth not only a little, but probably a good deal as these are all methods which are recommended when gaining followers. However, if you’ve used an automated script to gain followers, relied on follow-backs from randomly following others or simply gained them en masse by spamming Twitter, they’re likely worth about as much as a handful of used toilet paper.

2. Targeting

Are your followers simply any soul you could get so you enjoy the outcome of an inflated ego when you looked at your follower numbers? If that’s the case, then they’re probably not worth much to you. On the other hand, if your fans on Twitter are people who are genuinely interested in what you’re saying, the industry or interest group you’re in, or your geographic location, then they’ll be worth their weight in myrrh-coated saffron. And of course, to easily increase your targeted followers, you can always buy them in packages from 1,000 and up from us.

3. Relationship

If you gained the vast majority of your followers simply because you give out a free report if they follow you, then there’s a good chance most of them will avoid your tweets like a bacteria-laden carcass in the future. To really strike Twitter gold, the best followers come from those people who have done business with you before, regularly read your material or who you know personally. If you can even accrue a few hundred followers like this, you’ll perform many times better than people who have lists of five and six figures of people they have no business knowing.

4. Numbers

While a lot of people say the number of followers you have is the be-all and end-all, it’s not always the case. The three points I’ve mentioned until now are by far more important when considering the worth of your followers, but after you’ve tackled them to the best of your abilities, the number of followers you have does come into it. Just make sure you’re not riding the value of your followers on this alone because if you consider only numbers and not the overall quality of your followers, you may find yourself rather disappointed when it comes to promoting a product or service to them.

Take these points into consideration when attempting to decide how much your followers are each worth to you, though you can never truly know the value of your Twitter account and the people following you until you spend a good month marketing to them and letting the figures speak for themselves.

The best way of doing this is to send maybe 1-2 promotional messages to your followers every day for a month and tracking how many sales this results in. Divide the amount earned by your number of followers and you’ll have a figure which will be the average value of each follower on your list.

And if you’re any kind of marketer you’ll know that the figures always speak for themselves!

Upon launch, Twitter was hailed for its ability to be used as a realtime search engine by gathering data regarding stories and events as they happened, not waiting several hours (or even days) for data like this to be collated. And the recent 220,000+ tweets per hour during the Iranian elections really showed what a system like this could do.

More and more companies now are focusing on how to better collate realtime data, including Google who are in talks to buy Twitter, many believing only for the realtime search abilities.

A new contender to this market is CrowdEye.com who laucnhed today and promise to be a strong contender in the market, though the company themselves admit they can only index a portion of all content, not everything in its entirety. This isn’t a shock however, as the site is only in its early days and will grow and expand as time goes on.

Take a look at CrowdEye by clicking here.

Undeniable nerd heartthrob Olivia Munn has been a popular little thing lately co-hosting Attack Of The Show, and now she’s going to be starring alongside a certain Mr. Downey Jr. in the next folm incarnation of Marvel’s ever-popular hero in red armour.

While she’s not playing War Machine in the movie as she so comically tweeted about on her Twitter account, she will definitely have a role in there somewhere, though it’s not confirmed yet exactly who she’ll be playing or the exact size of the role.

So, are we looking forward to seeing her on screen? Well, it will be something to look out for, though not the only reason to go ahead and see the film in our opinions. We’re much more excited about seeing War Machine joining the Iron Man arsenal and adding a whole lot more “KABOOM!”

In case you missed it last year, Twestival is a Twitter-based event which promotes charity through donations for user’s favourite not-for-profit organisations. The event is going ahead again this year and will be taking place on September the 12th.

If you’re interested in helping promote the event or fundraising on the day, you can register from July 1st through Twitter, who are aiming to beat last year’s goal of $250,000 raised through the site. We’ll definitely be registering to show our support so keep an eye on this blog for more details as to what we’ll be doing.

The email itself from Twitter regarding the event:

February 12, 2009. It happened everywhere, from Bangalore to Paris, Buenos Aires to Cape Town, Sydney to Toronto. 202 cities with of people from different cultures, religions and languages banded together during Twestival and decided that every human being on this planet deserves safe drinking water. We came together at tweetups, we raised money, and together we funded 55 water projects. This means 17,000 people now have access to a new life with clean and disease-free water, and you can watch the impact this made here. I can’t imagine any other age in history when people from nations around the world, some of whom were supposed to be sworn enemies, could work together towards a common goal with such ease and authenticity.

We can make brilliant things happen if we put our hearts behind them. Today at the 140 Character Conference Amanda Rose, the founder of Twestival is making two official announcements. The first is Twestival Local on September 12th. The goal is “to give people the opportunity to feel they are a part of a larger social movement, but bring the cause a little closer to home”. On this day, cities will be encouraged to host events and select a registered charity to support with 100% of the proceeds. Official city registration will open on July 1st via twestival.com and you can stay tuned by following @twestival on Twitter. A guidebook and information on how you can get involved will also be available on the site from next week.

The second is the official Twestival 2010 date which is (drumroll) February 4, 2010! In the month of October, the Twestival community will be given the opportunity to decide which cause will receive the donations.

Gandhi told us that we should be the change we want to see. What change would you like to see on September 12th?

According to TechCrunch, Google is set to possibly purchase social media giant Twitter for a sum which could be in excess of $250 million. While reports are early, this news apparently comes from several credible sources which are all saying the same thing.

This comes after recent news of the attempted Facebook acquisition of the site for around half a billion, though it’s impossible to compare the two figures as Facebook’s deal included a whole swag of very overvalued stock. As Google’s bid would assumedly be cash-based, it would be worth much more on face value.

If the sale goes ahead it will be the second sale from the founders of Twitter to Google as the sale of Blogger went ahead only five years ago. Biz Stone and Evan Williams must have a mighty large smile on their faces right about now.

Whether it’s going ahead or not will only be told in the future, however it’s a good bet that someone will buy Twitter eventually. Our only question is, when will Microsoft put their bid in?

Twitter has announced a rescheduling of its maintenance downtime due to the controversy surrounding the Iranian election, in a bid to have the site up and running during the day in Teheran and pulling it down while Iran is sleeping.

Initially the downtime was conveniently going to take place at 12.45AM US ET (while there would have been a lot less traffic on the site), though it’s now been aimed to go down at 2PM Pacific.

This was taken from the Twitter blog:

“A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.”

Can’t get enough of Twitter? If you’re anything like us then you’ll know your insatiable Twitter addiction can never truly be satisfied and it seems that guys over at Mashable have created something to help us sate our cravings even more.

The Mashable Lounge is a chatroom which will allow users to sign in via their Twitter login and chat with other users, as well as to listen in to important Mashable news, interviews and other juicy social media gossip — all without revealing your Twitter password as is the case with most other services that use the oAuth.

So go and check it out! You never know, you might just see us there from time-to-time!

Think there’s no money to be made on Twitter? Think again — Dell’s outlet store on Twitter (@DellOutlet) has announced they’ve recently surpassed $2 million USD in sales, giving proof to the theory that the platform can be used to make money.

In less than two years they’ve gone from zero to 640,000+ followers and have earned over $1 million in the last year alone, throwing all doubbts out the window that Twitter could not be used as a successful marketing tool — in fact, they’ve shown everyone that  for a free marketing medium, there are serious dollars to be made.

Despite this, it’s important to note that Dell did turn over $61 billion in 2008 (yeah, that’s with a “b”), so the marketing efforts on Twitter are really a minuscule drop in their earning pool.

But how exactly did they do it? Well, the fact that they had the Dell name to pull in the followers, as well as the marketing and branding power of a multi-billion-dollar organisation surely helped, though the simple fact is that if Dell can do it in that span of time, it’s extremely feasible that someone like you can do it as well.

All you need is the right strategy to get 640,000+ followers…

If you’re familiar with our services, you’ll know that a little over a month ago we began selling packages of Twitter followers and in that short time we’ve been absolutely bombarded with people looking to increase their follower numbers in order to help their marketing efforts — who knows, perhaps even you’ve invested in some!

We’re extremely excited to announce that as of today we’ve served over 250,000 followers to our clients — yes, that’s over a quarter of a million so far — on their accounts. We can’t imagine what the total impact that’s had on their combined efforts, though it must have been a HUGE one!

To celebrate even further, we’re offering you, our valued readers and clients, an additional 10% on top of any order of 5,000 or 10,000 followers but you have to be quick! This offer will be for the NEXT THREE CLIENTS ONLY and after that, we won’t be offering any more!

That means if you order a package of 5K or 10K followers right now, you’ll end up with a further 500-1,000 followers on top of your purchase at no extra cost. And considering we’re offering 25% off these services at present, we couldn’t imagine a better deal! Want to take advantage? Then you only need to go and buy Twitter followers right here!

So, thanks for celebrating the first 250,000 followers with us — we’re looking forward to the next quarter-million and beyond!

*** The following is a press release distributed by us online and to various media organisations. ***

As more and more people pile onto the Twitter bandwagon each and every day, the site is experiencing a massive growth in not only those using the site to keep in touch with friends and family, but those who want to use the site expressly for marketing purposes.

It’s a common sight these days for anyone with a Twitter account to be bombarded with links to affiliate products, services or whatever else. And while there are a select handful of people on the site marketing the right way, it seems that for the most part, spammers are having a field day on the site.

But according to web traffic company uSocial.net, there is money to be made on Twitter whether someone is spamming or not.

“There are new scripts being created almost on a daily basis to simply allow people to follow thousands of people at a time,” said uSocial CEO Leon Hill. “In many cases we’ve seen brand new accounts grow to over 1,500 followers in a day. While they generally get suspended in a very short time, in the time they’re active they market like crazy to their followers.”

uSocial say that people are using these tactics repeatedly in order to conduct spam-marketing campaigns and in some cases can attain tens of thousands of followers in a day over several accounts.

And they say that despite Twitter’s best efforts to contain it, things are not slowing down.

“Twitter has software in place which detects strange activity and suspends accounts based on this,” said Hill. “While it’s excellent for weeding out spammers, it can sometimes take days for the software to pick it up so these spammers usually have free reign for a while on each account.”

“Most of them have several accounts running simultaneously and as soon as one is shut down they simply open another and repeat. In the great scheme of things, Twitter really isn’t stopping anything at the moment.”

But uSocial say there is a light at the end of the tunnel in that most people are savvy not to take notice of spam accounts that send out hundreds of URL tweets in the space of minutes.

“Most people just ignore it so a lot of it isn’t doing much harm apart from the annoyance of having this stuff come up on your screen for a few days until the account is closed.” Continued Hill.

And speaking of marketing on Twitter, uSocial recently launched a new set of services based around the site which include the ability for users to buy followers. But what is the company’s stance on that? Should this be considered spam?

“Many people have suggested that buying Twitter followers is spam, however we simply manage other’s accounts in order to get them the greatest amount of followers possible in a short amount of time,” said Hill. “We have no control of the content someone places on their account so if they decide to use it for spamming, it’s their choice.”

“Though if they do, it’s almost a certainty their account will be closed by Twitter’s bots quite quickly.” Finished Hill.

The new services were launched around two weeks ago and can be found by going to http://usocial.net/twitter_marketing or for more information the company can be contacted via the form on their website.

But it seems as far as the Twitter spammers are concerned that uSocial have spoken about, most people believe they won’t be going away any time soon.