Twitter twaddler: Spiralling twitflation

When I saw Matt McGee's offer to donate $500 to charity if he could beat his friend to 500 twitter followers, a question occurred to me. 

McGee is clearly bribing people to follow him with the promise of the tiny sliver of self-satisfaction they'd gain from helping to benefit the charity, when in reality it's not the charity that's getting the real benefit here, but McGee. Having instant access to 500 people is surely worth more than $250 (his end of the bet), so if he "wins," he'll be getting a hell of a deal.

So let's cut to the chase: How much is a Twitter follower worth?  The service is becoming a valuable way to instantly broadcast promotional material, draw people's attention to cultural or political activities, and just basically wield power and influence.  So followers in a very real sense equal money.  The value of a particular follower depends, of course, on how may followers they themselves have. 

Us average Joes with 0-20 followers are probably more useful as consumers than as re-broadcasters.  Consumers are great, but they're sort of a dime a dozen.  Or more than that, maybe a dime each.  I'd pay a dime a follower -- any takers? 

The economics change when you talk about elite users, in the 1,000+ follower range.  Maybe you'd pay  $50 to Leo Laporte , knowing he could pass along your tweets to 25,000 people.  On the other hand, Laporte is already following 375 people, so the odds that anything you tweet actually gets to him are quite low.  Which decreases his own follow-value.  Maybe Leo's only worth $10. 

The problem with this kind of twitterola is that if everyone starts paying for followers, each individual follower will be devalued.  A twitter gold rush would result, with everyone and their uncle racing to twitter to follow as many people as possible, a dime a pop. You'd get spiraling inflation and the whole system would collapse. 

Seriously though, I will pay a dime per follower.  Let's do this.