Category: Technology Author : Steven Hodson Posted: January 17, 2009
Tags : affiliate links, friendfeed, robert scoble, Twitter
There have been past efforts in the early life of Twitter for folks to try an monetize their Twitter stream. After all for many bloggers Twitter is taking up almost as much time in their workflow as writing posts for their blogs. For some it has taken over more of their time and if you are like Robert Scoble it has people wondering how spending so much time there; and FriendFeed, instead of his blog is going to pay off off him. After all his blog is sponsored in part by Seagate but with him spending less time blogging and more time on Twitter one has to wonder – where’s the money.
Well according to some sharp digging by Louis Gray it appears that Robert has started to slide in an Amazon affiliate link for the Kindle. Granted it’s gonna take a lot of people actually clicking through and buying a Kindle for him to see any serious money but it raises and interesting question that goes beyond Robert’s experiment.
What if Twitter becomes the new affiliate marketing arena for less scrupulous people than Robert. As Louis pointed out in his post there was no disclaimer anywhere that this was an affiliate link that Robert had slid in there as a part of his Twitter message and given the 140 character limits on Twitter messages it is a little hard to do. However there are a lot of people out there using Twitter who aren’t of the same trust factor as Robert and given that inserted links on Twitter are usually shorten versions of the actual links how do we know that those links won’t start heading us to marketing pages without our explicit permission.
Affiliate sales are one of the largest money makers on the web but typically users visiting a site or blog will be able to tell that the links are indeed affiliate links; whether it by by disclaimers by the author or other means. Sure there are the unscrupulous ones who do everything they can to hide them but in general most bloggers are up front about this sort of thing.
With Twitter though there is no room for disclaimers or notices about affiliate links regardless of how honourable the person posting might be – or might not be. how are we going to know that the link we just clicked isn’t going to take us to some marketing page that we never wanted to go to. As much as we might want to trust the ethics of Robert in this case I think what he has done is going to end up being the tip of the marketing iceberg on Twitter for some time to come – and not one I’m looking forward to.
Jan 17, 2009
Regarding shortened URLs, I raised a similar question in this thread: “…what if an affiliate link in a tweet or a FriendFeed item is disguised via tinyurl or some such link shortening service? Yes, once the link's resolved, you'll see the “disclosure” that this is an affiliate link, but such disclosure will not be visible on the original tweet. Would that be considered misleading?” Of course, I then followed it up with a link to MY Amazon-sponsored item.
Regarding the difficulty of inserting disclaimers into tweets – in reality it's not all that difficult, if we can settle on a convention. Perhaps a hashtag such as #sponsored would do the trick. (Example.)
Jan 17, 2009
Technically, it's illegal in the UK to recommend something if you've a commerical relationship with there recommendation. I think Scobles' tweet is safe as he's not recommending anything (and he's not British).
I do wonder if many UK twitters might end up breaking the law (and whether the UK gov will care/notice).
Jan 17, 2009
personally I don't think who the Twitter personality is this idea of misleading monetization of their Twitter stream is wrong and I have written about this before. .. Sure monetize your Twitter page if you can or pay Twitter for bonus services is just fine but to try and turn your 140 characters into a money stream just strikes me as being really wrong.
Jan 17, 2009
whether or not it is possible to #hashtag a disclaimer for a tweet in my opinion is mute. AS I have steadily maintained that the idea of monetizing a Twitter stream is wrong.
Jan 18, 2009
Not sure if this counts as affiliate marketing through Twitter but consider the way @guykawasaki is starting to monetize *all* (?) his links: Most times when I follow his links the link is held in a frame where he squats on the destination page by inserting a BrightKit ad on top of whatever page he sent you to. I think the intention is good. BrightKit seems like a cool app, the frame/ad is easy to close in order to remove the frame and get the right URL displayed where you normally want to see it displayed, and I guess guys like Kawasaki actually *should* be seen pioneering new ways of monetizing their Twitter stream (it's all part of an evolution who may end up beneficiary to the larger corpus of Twitter users). However at the same time this way of doing it is taking away control from me as a user and thus my instinct is that this is spamming.
Jan 18, 2009
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Jan 18, 2009
First off, Tweeting need take no effort at all if you are just circulating marketing messages and posting blig update — Twitterfeed can take an RSS feed and Tweet it and you can easily sync Twitter and Friendfeed.
I can't see anything wrong with using Twitter for commercial purposes — it's a viable alternative to using Twitter than feeding an ego. But as with any form of opt-in marketing, overstep the mark and you'll find your audience unsubscribing. And then you're back to Square One.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
Jan 18, 2009
I noticed what Guy was doing and that is one reason why I will never follow any of his posted links on Twitter. I totally disagree with monetizing Twitter streams – I wrote about my thoughts on that here once before – http://www.inquisitr.com/6970/pimping-your-twit… .. my feelings haven't changed
Jan 18, 2009
I can see it as a way to promote one's posts as long as thatisn'tthe only reason you are using Twitter. I draw the line at “commercializing” a twitter stream and when I find it happening to me the first thing I do is unsub and then block the account.
Jan 19, 2009
agree. this is the tip of the iceberg. Many marketers are looking at Twitter as a way to extending their marketing reach.
Jan 22, 2009
interesting post and thought.
All in all there really is no difference between how he uses affiliate links his blog vs. Twitter. But each channel has its own behavior and nuance around it. the same blog follower who accepts affiliate link ads on the blog and in the rss feed might now want to get them in the Tweets. I wonder how this will effect his followers in the different channels.