This week Amazon introduced a new feature called "Share on Twitter," enabling Amazon's affiliates to place hidden advertisement while chatting on Twitter.
Using this new feature, every Amazon associate can easily – and directly from product's page at Amazon website – put link to this page on his/her Twitter status.
If anyone makes a purchase using that link, the associate will earn commission. The important thing is a way "Share on Twitter" feature is set up: it helps to place hidden ads, misleading other Twitter users.
This ad is not marked as an ad and instead appears as though it's simply a helpful recommendation. That way, any Amazon's associate is able to pretend he/she is helping, while in fact he/she is earning money. As a result, nobody will be sure if recommended product is really worth a recommendation, or it's just a source of revenue.
How it works
Technically speaking the new feature is a semi-automatic way to generate "tweetable" links to any Amazon product and to place them on Twitter.
It's quite clearly described on the
Amazon Associated Blog:
By clicking on the Share on Twitter button in the Site Stripe, a new window will open and an Amazon-generated message is pre populated in the ‘What are you doing?’ text area of your Twitter account (you may be asked to log in to your Twitter account). That message will include a shortened URL that already includes your Associates ID. You’ll have the option to edit this message or simply hit the ‘Update’ button to post to your Twitter account.
Default Amazon-generated message in the Twitter text area is: "Check out this Amazon deal: 'product's name and description'
http://bit.ly/2X7GNt". But it could be edited, and would appear as: "Wow, the best thing I ever seen. You must have it!: 'product's name and description'
http://bit.ly/2X7GNt".
And the hidden ad is made in three simple steps.
As Sarah Perez on
ReadWriteWeb notes, Amazon uses for its new "Share on Twitter" feature, Twitter default URL shortener,
bit.ly.
That way, the links do not look suspicious to Twitter users. In fact that helps to hide the advertising, as Amazon could use its proprietary URL shortener, amzn.com, but it isn't.
This service is already in use by Amazon (but not in the "Share on Twitter"), as described in
Amazon Associates Social Networking FAQ:
We also offer shortened URLs for product detail pages on Amazon.com. You can easily locate the appropriate shortened URL by visiting the detail page of the product you would like to recommend and clicking on the “Share with friends” link. The URL is displayed next to “Permalink” in the pop-up window. For instance, here is the shortened URL for the 6" Kindle: http://amzn.com/B00154JDAI
To create an Associates tagged link, simply add your Associates tag after the “=” sign at the end of the URL: http://amzn.com/B00154JDAI/tag=
As we can see, there is no problem in generating shorten links, which look like:
http://amzn.com/B00154JDAI/. If Amazon would choose that way for its "Share on Twitter" feature, everyone could easily distinguish tips from ads. Now the line between conversation and advertising is blurred.
Hidden advertising is an old idea
The idea of putting the hidden ads on the Internet is not new. You can find some other online businesses enabling their affiliates to place not marked links leading to their websites and letting to earn affiliate's fee that way.
Big Stock Photo (one of the microstock photography companies) allows you to place a link that looks like this:
Stock Photos, Search and Download Now!.
If anyone would make a purchase after clicking that link, the Big Stock Photo affiliate will earn money. The default message can be edited and using
bit.ly, it can be innocently shared on Twitter.
The differences between new Amazon "Share on Twitter" feature and other hidden links are:
1. Semi-automatic. The whole operation is easy to make in simple three steps;
2. Targeting. Its only one, clear target is Twitter;
3. Massive scale of expected hidden ads. As Amazon is the biggest online retailer and nearly one third of its revenue is generated by affiliates (28% in the second quarter of 2005 , which was nearly half a billion of dollars, according to "Wikinomics" by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams), everyone can expect a vast amount of spam flooding Twitter.
Reactions
Reactions to the new Amazon Twitter integration are mixed. Some Amazon affiliates express their satisfaction, both on Twitter and on Amazon Associated Blog, but most of other people – especially Twitter users – are against it.
Extreme reactions include messages like this: "I will unfollow anyone who send me hidden link to Amazon website."
