'Un-famous' Twitter users can make money from tweets gone viral with just a reply
iStock Twitter users glommed onto an inventive way to harness the power of tweets that go viral to make a few bucks for themselves. A growing number of Twitter users –- many of them with very few followers of their own -- have glommed onto an inventive way to harness the power of tweets that go viral to make a few bucks for themselves. These savvy users do this first by finding a tweet that’s garnering a lot of attention. They then use the reply tool to point the Twitterverse toward a brand, which, in turn, pays a small fee in exchange for the mention. None of this happens through Twitter’s established advertising system, meaning the company doesn’t get a cut of the transaction, and it may break Twitter Inc.’s rules requiring disclosure of payment for promotion. Here’s how it plays out for Blake Forbes. The 20-year-old college student from Austin, Minnesota, runs the Twitter account @BirdExecutive. It only has about 8,000 followers. That’s paltry compared with the likes of J...