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How many twitter startups can proudly claim they are profitable? Among 2000 plus out there, only about a few dozens are getting it right, then among these few dozens, only the crown jewels are able to make noble profit. (Note I exclude, and disqualify ANY follower chasing softwares/ebookers charging people hundreds of dollars to “effectively” use twitter. They are not noble and twitter should ban them!)

Let me introduce Cheaptweet.com, a name that reminds me average Joe, discount shops, coupons and bad economy. However, there is nothing average about this startup. If RetailmeNot.com is the king of online coupon business, Cheaptweet.com, in my opinion, is the king of real time deals search – I feel lucky and honored to have a chance interviewing Founder/CEO of Cheaptweet.com, a twitter app/community developed at Appozite LLC.

1. How did you come up with the idea (a bit background information). Explain what cheaptweet.com is.

CheapTweet.com is a search engine for deals on Twitter. We use the Twitter API and natural language processing to find tweets about deals which are placed on CheapTweet.com. From there we use various mechanisms to filter out the best deals including monitoring retweets and Twitter discussions as well as allowing our community of users to vote for the best deals by clicking our “It’s Cheap” button. We came up with the idea after noticing how many small shops were using Twitter to promote themselves with special offers but seeing that there was no good way to find the without painstaking Twitter searches and following thousands of people. We decided we could build a filter that would make it much easier to find all these interesting and valuable deals.

2. How long did it take you to launch the site. Are you bootstrapping or full blown start up with funding?

Version 1 of the site was done in less than a week. We’ve since put a lot more work into building out our functionality but the core technology was there. We’re a full-blown startup.

3. Based on your experiences, who are the people who actually tweet about the deals? Are they mainly discount/coupon sites’ twitter accounts, or ordinary Joe?

The great thing about Twitter is that there’s such a mix of people. We do see a lot of deals sites essentially tweeting a stream of deals but the really exciting thing for us is all the small sellers who are using Twitter to make unique offers you can’t find anywhere else. Every day we see hundreds of deals on one-of-a kind handmade goods promoted by sellers on Etsy and Artfire. These and other small sellers do a great mix of personal and more marketing-oriented tweets. I think this is exemplary of the mixing of personal and business that we see on Twitter in general. These types of goods are meant to be sold but are also labors of love done by people who need this as a creative outlet. We also see big brands, small brands, local shops and retailers of al sizes come through with offers. In addition to those we pick up the average Joe’s tweets about valuable deals or coupon codes he or she found. Many of those tweets take the form of word-of-mouth recommendations.

4. If there is one thing, what is it that you think the key to cheaptweet’s success comparing to other discount twitter apps? Any major competitors in mind to fend off?

The key to our success is that we’re not based on an affiliate revenue model. We’re open and will pick up anyone’s tweet about anything so long as it seems like a good deal. We don’t make our money trying to drive click-throughs to particular stores that pays us a few cents per click. This means we get these deals on unique products you simply can’t find anywhere else on the web.

5. What is the business model?

Our business model is based around advertising and providing additional exposure to those Twitterers who want it. We’re making money right now on Twitter-based advertising on the site. We offer prominent placement of particular Twitter accounts as well as a sponsored tweet that works much like a sponsored link in a Google search.

We see ourselves as a megaphone that helps anyone who has a deal on Twitter reach a larger audience. Along those lines, we’re going to be announcing some innovative new services in the near future. Look for an announcement in a few weeks on that.

6. How’s growth prospect for cheaptweet and what kind of future plans are in the work? Technology, Partnership, product offering..etc.

We feel like there’s an extraordinary opportunity here for growth with CheapTweet. Twitter is growing enormously and people are always going to be interested in saving money. Beyond that though, the potential for social, real-time coupons, discounts and offers is only in the extremely early stages of being realized. We’re well positioned to be a significant player in that space. On the technology front there’s still plenty of work to do to create an even more useful service for people and we’re continuing to work in the areas of searchability, natural language processing and social recommendations. As for future partnerships and products, look for that announcement I mentioned above soon.