TwitterCounter: Paying To Be “Featured”?

Yet another questionable business practice: charging users to be “featured”?

[via email]

Hi,

You recently inquired about becoming a featured user on TwitterCounter. We get a lot of requests for that position so decided to charge a fee for the privilege. We currently generate 17000 page-views a day and featured users are displayed on every page. The price for a week is currently $499 and we expect to raise that as page-views increase over the following weeks. We are sold out until the week of 4/20/2009 till 4/27/2009. If you are interested in booking a week for yourself please let us know as soon as possible.

Payment:

We accept payment via Paypal. Email the money to [email address] and as soon as we receive the money we will tell you which week is reserved for you.

Sincerely,

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

[email address]

http://twittercounter.com

I don’t actually remember asking about becoming a featured user on TwitterCounter, aside from trying to learn how it works. Well, now I know: you pay for it.

Pretty sketchy approach, I think.