Nerd Thoughts…

So I was doing laundry and I wanted to watch something “TV-ish” on my PC monitor while folding clothes. I thought about seeing what was on Joost, but I never re-downloaded it after my last hard drive crashed and I wasn’t in the mood to do so at the moment.

So I checked itunes. And almost immediately I spotted something that triggered my carnal impulsive buying behavior mechanisms…

And it was only $9.99. My brain turned off and I just bought it.

You can buy it here: (aff)

I was so excited about the purchase I wanted to tell the world, via Twitter of course. But then I remembered I could link straight to this great deal using the itunes affiliate program I signed up for a million years ago. So I went to LinkShare.com, logged in, and generated the link and posted it in my tweet.

The whole process made me wish Twitter had a field under the settings where you could fill in your affiliate ID number for itunes, amazon, or whatever and that any time you link to something on those sites it would automatically make it an affiliate link. Seems like a neat idea that could generate a little money for people who are unwittingly being viral marketers for these products.

But then I thought about this one guy on Twitter… Vaspers. This guy is the antithesis of everything capitalistic. And he is, to some degree, the voice of ideal morality in a web 2.0 era. My gut told me he would argue against using an affiliate link in your tweets because it compromises your integrity. And I can understand that. It’s kind of like sponsored blog posts. How can you truly know if someone is expressing their honest opinion about product or service on a blog, on twitter, or through any social online medium if they are some how getting a “kick back”?

So there in lies the dilemma. What if you honestly think something is cool, interesting, of value and want to tell other people? Is it wrong then to use an affiliate link? Is it wrong to think, “hey, if someone follows this link on my recommendation and makes a purchase the store should give me some type of referral payment?”

Personally, I think if it’s a legitimate referral about something you believe in then it’s ok. But what differentiates the legitimate person from the typical affiliate hack just trying to generate clicks and sales? I really don’t have an answer for that. Does anyone?

- This has been a Nerd Thought by John Fitzsimmons

Side Note: When watching “V”, originally debuted in 1983, I noticed that most the people in the show got there first knowledge of the alien motherships from watching it on television. And I thought, here we are almost 25 years later with mobile technologies and the Internet yet, I believe, if something like aliens were to make contact today people would still learn about it on TV.

The network established to disseminate information through television is not something that can easily be replaced. Merged with current technologies, yes; but replaced by things like user generated videos or mobile blogging… not any time soon. Even though we are now more connected than ever, we are still vastly disorganized in terms of information distribution. And I’m not sure that is something easily remedied.

Other Side Note: According to Wikipedia, “V: The Second Generation, a sequel to the first miniseries, is scheduled to be published in November 2007; a TV adaption is also planned for 2008.” I couldn’t find anything official but here is a pretty cool fan made teaser (If you never saw the original this will spoil it. Be warned!):