What’s a fan worth?

Saw this come across my Twitter feed tonight from tech journalist/commentator/podcast mogul Leo Laporte:

Sony and ad.ly offered me $2000 for one ad tweet last week. I didn’t do it – but what do you think? Should I have taken the money?

The old way of thinking is to grab the money.  You’ve built the audience and you’ve earned it.  But, when you do the math…

@leolaporte that works out to $.0129 per subscriber? Sounds like a good deal for Sony. Glad you valued your followers more than that!

How quick would you sell out your fans?  The ones that searched you out and clicked “follow”, signed up for an email newsletter, or bought from your store?

Also, this is where you see the difference between a company like Apple and Sony.  Apple has rabid fan customers that are chomping at the bit for any morsel of new product info, while Sony has to try and buy random lists and push news to people that aren’t interested.  The shift continues…