• TechCrunch, Monday, June 8, 2009 12:15 PM

83 Degrees is launching a new service called Super Chirp that lets Twitter users get paid for their content stream. This is great news for celebrity tweets, says Michael Arrington; Britney Spears, for example, has 1.7 million Twitter followers. "How many of them would be willing to pay $1, or $10, per month to see a premium stream of her content?" Good question, actually.

Super Chirp works through direct messages, Twitter's private messaging system, which means that publishers can leverage their existing Twitter accounts to promote paid streams. Users subscribe to the content on the Super Chirp site, pay via PayPal, and then get the messages via direct message. They can also visit Super Chirp to see all the paid messages and sort them by publisher.

"This is a natural product for celebrities to embrace," says Arrington. "But it's also interesting for charities -- loyal supporters can donate to the charity and get a stream of news relevant to that charity, or whatever. Some news outlets may try to charge for streams as well." Publishers set the price, between $0.99 and $9.99 per month, and Super Chirp keeps 30% of the gross, which includes the Paypal fees.

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