Apparently [note the word, apparently as I couldn't see this anywhere in their T's & C's] Amazon will not honour payments for sales generated by Twitter or any tool that shorten urls.

This blogger seems to feel hard done by for not getting his commissions, which is a fair enough feeling, no-one likes losing money they have earned.

However, I believe Amazon is right to not honour payments from url shorteners and or twitter [et. al] Why? Well the use of url shorteners could be seen as a method of cloaking a paid ad. In an ideal world, the user needs to see that they are clicking on a commercial link, rather than straight recommendation.

Furthermore, the Twitter thing is potentially more about the trust of Twitter users. In just a few clicks you can find websites offering ‘real’ twitter accounts by the thousand. Indeed my followers have grown exponentially with ‘real’ people but I’m not convinced they are indeed genuine users. Therefore the real value of a Twitter recommendation may be heading south as more ‘spammers’ jump on.

So, Amazon has a trust issue to manage. They also have a communication issue to deal with – it may be time to make such policies a little clearer.

This ruling doesn’t mean you cannot use Twitter to promote Amazon products, you just have to promote your products on your own blog/personal space and promote that link instead of directly to Amazon. Whilst this takes a little more leg work, you also have the potential to upsell the audience.

These are my bookmarks for June 24th from 16:54 to 17:12:

• Read It Later Launches New iPhone App (But if You Don’t Like It, You Can Build Your Own!) – Read It Later, a cross-platform browser extension for saving online articles for later reading, has just debuted their newly updated iPhone application. This latest version introduces a number of useful features for voracious mobile readers including support for articles spanning multiple pages, support for sites requiring logins (like WSJ or NYT), new sharing features, and a lot more.
• Mafia makes money from Twitter (but you didn’t hear it from us) | Digital | Revolution – LONDON – Social media gaming start-up Lolplaying is turning to the Mob to generate revenue from Twitter, with the launch of a game that allows users to turn their followers into La Cosa Nostra.
• Once Touted As A Google Killer, Cuil May Deal With Search King – Yahoo! News – Cuil , the upstart search site launched by former Google engineers to a wave of publicity last year, isn't too cool to do business with its supposed rivals, Google or Yahoo.
• Google wants to make friends with your agency | Search | Revolution – Google is testing the new AgencyLand platform in the US with agences including Aegis' Carat Interpublic's Initiative and WPP's Ogilvy and plans to roll it out to all major search spenders.

These are my bookmarks for June 24th from 15:39 to 16:55:

• Mafia makes money from Twitter (but you didn’t hear it from us) | Digital | Revolution – LONDON – Social media gaming start-up Lolplaying is turning to the Mob to generate revenue from Twitter, with the launch of a game that allows users to turn their followers into La Cosa Nostra.
• Once Touted As A Google Killer, Cuil May Deal With Search King – Yahoo! News – Cuil , the upstart search site launched by former Google engineers to a wave of publicity last year, isn't too cool to do business with its supposed rivals, Google or Yahoo.
• Google wants to make friends with your agency | Search | Revolution – Google is testing the new AgencyLand platform in the US with agences including Aegis' Carat Interpublic's Initiative and WPP's Ogilvy and plans to roll it out to all major search spenders.
• MAC Tips, Techniques, MAC Freeware, How to use MAC, free training mac | All about MAC by TheMacTips.com – loads of tips and free software to boost mac productivity.

These are my bookmarks for June 24th from 12:50 to 13:22:

• Top 50 Twitter Acronyms, Abbreviations and Initialisms « digiphile – A big list of well used acronyms used on Twitter
• It’s a Search Engine Bonanza | Mark Evans – Over the past couple of weeks, Microsoft’s Bing has captured a lot of attention but it’s just one of many new search engines that have appeared on the scene. Some are trying to go head to head with Google, some are focused on Twitter, and some have adopted a hybrid approach by focusing on real-time search.

These are my links for June 18th through June 21st:

• Strange Maps – A great map related blog.
• NASA To Fire Exploding Rocket Into the Moon: Follow it on Twitter and Facebook – NASA has always done cool things, but its latest mission is really a sci-fi geek’s dream come true, as it includes flying a rocket into the moon, triggering a huge explosion.

These are my bookmarks for June 17th from 13:13 to 17:11:

• Royalty Free Stock Photography : Matton Images UK – A great new royalty free images website
• Yellowsn0w becomes ultrasn0w, iPhones everywhere swoon – iPhone Dev Team displayed their inimitable talents with a live video demonstration of yellowsn0w’s
  big, bad, unstoppable brother: ultrasn0w
• Nest Unclutterer – It's a new web app called Nest Unclutterer and it simplifies the process of knocking out those Twitter friends who are no longer bringing you value.
• Good.ly – the URL shortener for Twitter that generates cash for charity – If you use Good.ly to make a product recommendation on Twitter (it’s also at @good_ly) and people click on and then buy what you suggested, Good.ly gives 55% of any earned referral fees to one of its nominated charities.
• Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2 — Demo, Tutorials & Screenshots – Possibly the best demonstration suite I have ever seen. You effectively get to trial using the system in a sandbox rather than watching a video.
• Job Listings on ScriptLance – A place to get freelance designers working on your specific script requirements
• Reseller Hosting, Web Hosting & Domain Names | Web Hosting Heart Internet – Good hosting company recommended by EggBoxRobin

These are my bookmarks for June 14th from 17:46 to 17:49:

• iPhone Stencil Kit | Design Commission – Sketch out your iphone design ideas with this iPhone Stencil Kit
• blog.jedchristiansen.com » Blog Archive » Thursday, June 18th – Announcing Cambridge Tech DEMO Night – Cambridge, UK is known for top science and engineering talent and research. More exciting is that many of these innovations and ideas are leaving the lab and are being commercialized by startups created in Cambridge.
• 30 Fresh and High Quality Twitter Icon Sets | Icons – Placing a Twitter “follow me” button on your website or blog is certainly one of the easiest way to convert visitors into Twitter followers. Designing a beautiful Twitter icon or badge can be challenging for those who know less about design, but the good news is – there are plenty of nice and high quality Twitter icons and badges available for free.

These are my links for June 4th through June 5th:

• Google Chrome for Mac and Linux has Arrived: But Don’t Download it Yet – Google has just announced the first official beta versions of Google Chrome, its browser, for Mac and Linux. As of now, these versions are only available in the developer channel, which is Google's cutting edge, rapid-release channel for Google Chrome that is geared towards developers and testers, but not the mainstream public.
• template size Twitter background guidelines – Croncast – Ever wanted to make an interesting Twitter background? Here's how I did it.
• WordPress hack: Display your tags in a dropdown menu – I never liked tag clouds, for the simple reason that most of the time, they’re aren’t readable properly. Here is the solution to this problem: Displaying tags in a dropdown menu.
• Chart.ly – share stock charts on twitter
• Google Integration Toolkit • Projekty • Poradnik Webmastera – Google provides a lot of useful services, which can be integrated with your blog. With them you can check how your site is indexed in Google (using Google Webmaster Tools), get detailed statistics (Google Analytics), earn money (Google AdSense) and more. Most of them can be integrated using Text Widget only or modifying theme. This can cause problems, especially for beginners. Moreover, you have to remember to make all changes again when you decide to switch to new theme. You can avoid all of these problems by using Google Integration Toolkit plugin.
• How to Change the World: 24 Hours at Sea on the USS Nimitz – On Friday, May 29, 2009, fourteen bloggers and “distinguished visitors” served a twenty-four hour tour of duty on the USS Nimitz. The following 140 or so pictures and videos document this visit
• Snagsta | Your favourite things. Sorted. – Make lists of your favourite things. Share them with your friends. Discover new stuff in the lists of people similar to you.
• Top 50 UK Charity People by Twitter Followers | Snagsta – This is a list of Third Sector people I've found to be really passionate, knowledgeable and generous on Twitter. It's only a start, as I know there are lots of other great people out there, but I tried to limit the list by having individual (not organisation) profiles. I hope you enjoy following their tweets.
• Can Webwise Discover save Phorm? News – PC Advisor – Controversial behavioural advertising firm Phorm has announced a new system called Webwise Discover, a tool that can be used to recommend deep site content to web visitors based on tracking previous internet use.
• 9 Crucial UI Features of Social Media and Networking Sites | How-To | Smashing Magazine – This article goes over crucial features of the user interfaces of social media and social networking sites. It discusses important features, techniques and concepts behind these designs and explains why they are important, with examples from top sites. These easy and general usability strategies can be applied almost anywhere and to almost any type of user interface.
• BBC NEWS | World | Aerial guide to the D-Day beaches – BBC correspondent Robert Hall gives an aerial guided tour of the French coastline where the D-Day landings took place 65 years ago

Don Riddell, CNN London Anchor and big brother had a very interesting interview with The Streets about how Twitter will affect the music business for ever. The interview, available below covers off how Mike Skinner is using Twitter to test tracks on a daily basis ensuring he understands what his fans like and dislike as he puts together his next album.

This form of social collaboration has the great potential to ensure album sales as the fans have been involved in the process and will feel much greater affiliation and affection for the music when it comes out. It also has the potential to save artists, and in particular independent artists much studio time which could be wasted heading down the wrong track.

Whether such a process will take an element of mystique out of the process is something we will need to see over time. I for one think it is a great idea.

Related articles by Zemanta

• A Record Label in 140 Characters or Less (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Mike Skinner, new music, week #2 (theredradio.typepad.com)
• Mike Skinner is at it again, listen/download The Streets “David Hassles” (theredradio.typepad.com)
• mp3: the streets gives away new song via twitter (gorillavsbear.blogspot.com)

These are my links for June 2nd through June 3rd:

• How to: hide portions of text to Google on your WordPress blog – Hiding a portion of text to Google is damn easy, but not everyone is aware of this method. Simply use the following html comments in your source files (or in WordPress editor, in html mode) to hide a specific sentence or text to Google robots.
• WordPress › Lock Out « WordPress Plugins – This plugin will allow you to put your website into Lock Out mode to prevent access while you preform upgrades or maintenance on your site. Includes the ability to upload a pre-made html file for use as a placeholder page while in lock out mode or build your own online. The login page is still accessible and will allow only the user role you set to view the site normally while in lock out mode.
• 13 Beautifully Designed Mac and iPhone App Websites | Web Design Ledger – The Apple brand is synonymous with good design. It also seems that a lot of applications made for Macs and the iPhone seem to possess a little something extra when it comes to aesthetics. The designers of these apps do a great job in carrying over that same high level of quality in branding. This is evident in the applications themselves as well as their websites. Most of these sites all share certain qualities such as excellent use of color, big highly detailed icons, and pixel perfect buttons.
• Google AJAX Feed API – Dynamic Feed Control Wizard – Embed a Dynamic Feed Control on your web page and let your users see customized views of the feeds. Customize how the dynamic feed control should be displayed, and this wizard will write the code for you.
• Turn iPhone Photos into Postcards – No Stamps Required! – Are you an iPhone-equipped world traveler? If so, then you're going to love Postino, the latest app from AnguriaLab. This mobile application lets you take iPhone photos and turn them into postcards which you can send to your family and friends. And no, they don't mean "e-cards" (although Postino supports those, too) – they mean actual, printed out, physical cards send through the good ol' fashioned snail mail service.
• Micro Persuasion: What is the Future of Twitter? Only You Know – Yesterday during my keynote on the future of Twitter at the TWTRCON conference in San Francisco I decided to do something different. For one day, at least, I put away PowerPoint and fired up a mind mapping program (in my case I use Mind Node for the Mac).
• Blogsalot – Now, look. I want to talk about John Mayer. Not because I'm recently obsessed with him. Not because his song Waiting For The World To Change is one of the best things I've heard in ages (despite being released three years ago) or because he's way better looking than I am (bastard). No. I want to talk about John Mayer's approach to releasing an album in a marketing context.