Eric Nagel

Not too long ago (July 7, 2009 to be exact) there was a story out about an Amazon affiliate (or, Associate, as Amazon likes to call us) who was denied their affiliate earnings because they distributed their affiliate link via Twitter. Amazon’s reasoning, they argued, is the link was not distributed via the affiliate’s website. Shawn Collins took the extra step and added Twitter to his Amazon Associates profile, so he could share affiliate links via Twitter (but, nice many Twitter users don’t use the web interface, do you have to add every Twitter app, too?).

Today, in a complete 180, Amazon today announced Amazon Associates Now Integrates Directly with Twitter (and at the same time single-handedly creates one of the longest filenames I’ve ever seen at 130 characters).

Once you’re logged into your Amazon Associates account, you’ll see a nice toolbar on top of any page you are browsing at Amazon.com. This toolbar now includes a Share on Twitter button. Click it, and you’re taken to Twitter’s web interface with your status pre-filled with some sales copy (Great deal on Amazon), the product title and a link. What’s lacking here is any disclosure (ala SponsoredTweets #ad hashtag)

I was hoping to see the ability to change the default sales copy in my Site Stripe Options, but that’s not yet available.

In addition, bit.ly is used as the default shortener, but without the option to specify my bit.ly account information, the only stats I have are from Amazon themselves.

This is a great move by Amazon and based on the simplicity of the implementation, should have been done a while back. However, kudos to them for getting it live before the holiday rush.