Based on the uber-excellent conversation going on in this thread below, a few of us, at the behest of Brian Littleton’s helpful suggestion, have decided to do a series of posts based on web2.0 program adoption in affiliate marketing.
I’m sure most of you wouldn’t want to spill the beans on how you are using these emerging platforms as this sort of implementation is still “valuable” knowledge, but maybe we can lay out some ideas without giving away too much of the secret sauce?
I’ll do as many of these posts as you all think is necessary depending on the platform. Of course we’ll ask about MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and the more well knowns, but I wanted to start this with a service called Twitter which has been the latest rage amongst the A Listers.
Twitter was born as an interesting side project within the offices of Odeo in March of 2006. We are a part of Obvious Corporation in the beautiful South Park neighborhood of San Francisco, California.
Twitter is a relatively new service which allows you to make a quick post with your current thoughts, etc. It has been used by many (including myself) as a way of quickly social networking as you can send messages to Twitter via IM, txt messages from your cell or on the web.
The benefit is that if you are trying to reach a group of people, or even just one person, you can post up a message that will be received on the other person’s own time. I’ve even begun to schedule phone calls and conference calls with Twitter. Users can personalize the look and feel of their pages to suit their own personalities as well.
So, can this type of platform be used for affiliate marketing?
I’d argue that it could, but it would require a serious conversation based relationship with your users/readers/consumers/customers. That would require a re-thinking by many of the merchant programs already in the affiliate space.
