The post was done somewhat in the heat of the moment, but I also had some constructive criticism for the service.

Since then, I’ve been epitomized as the “Twitter Hater”, being the link out on countless blog posts when people are talking about the lovers vs. the haters. Reason being, I rank pretty well for “Hate Twitter” on google. Looking for an example of a hater? There I am.

In the past year, I’ve had occasional dalliances with Twitter. I’d give it a shot every few months and it normally wouldn’t last.

But recently, something different happened. I don’t know quite what, but I like Twitter now. I think it’s a combination of who I continue to follow (about 150 people) and how they behave. It’s sort of a perfect storm of who I’m interested in and how they actually use twitter.

My major complaint back over a year ago was so many people were having lengthy personal conversations with each other. The one-off reply tweets are no problem at all. It’s the full on, IM-like discussions that were turning me off.

I think at some point, probably much sooner than I realized, people finally got that Twitter is a broadcast. Early on, many people who I wanted to follow because I knew they were interesting were also treating more like a telephone conversation where the boring personal dialog would go on and on. and on. and on.

That killed it for me.

Now, people still broadcast their random thoughts at random times, but most seem much more conscious of the fact that they’re “on the air”, and that there’s only a certain level of one-on-one dialog that people will take. Most anyway…

So, What do I l..ll…love about Twitter?

I enjoy knowing what’s going on in my friend’s lives both personally and professionally. Right now I know that a bunch of people I know like @StephAgresta and @GaryVee are at the SXSW conf, and it sounds pretty damn fun. I know that @SamHarrelson and @wporter got together and did a big long podcast last night and I’ll want to check that out. @toddcrawford is out on his bike. @LisaP is chilling on the patio (and ragging on me), and @MissyWard is a proud mom today.

That’s a bunch of weekend type stuff. How else would I ever know these things about my friends who are all over the place.

If it were a weekday, there’d be lots of industry related stuff, which is also great to know about.

There are other people who I don’t really know personally, but I am interested in what they’re thinking about. So I follow many people who have no idea who I am, or if they do, we’ve never met.

There are people I wish I’d hear more about, but are probably of the mindset that random messages on Twitter are spammy or otherwise haven’t yet seen the light and don’t say much. (You know who @you are.)

Like everything, you’ve got to take the bad with the good. I’m pretty tolerant now of folks who share a little too much, make little sense to me, or do little but draw attention to themselves and their blogs. And there’s a point where I will simply stop following.

So if you’re like me, a (former) Twitter Hater, or even just a skeptic, give it a try. Take it slow. Don’t follow too many people, and if you find yourself saying, “so what?” more than anything else, just be ruthless with the Un-follow button. There’s definitely an equilibrium you reach between who you follow and who you don’t. Lighten up and have some fun.

And if you still don’t get it, read this. 

There is one notable change this year, however, which is the days of the week that it falls on. CJU has always started on Sunday night and wrapped up on Tuesday. This year, it kicks off on Tuesday afternoon for the pre-show education sessions and Tuesday night for the reception with the main conference days being Wednesday and Thursday. That’ll change the complexion of this trip a little without the abutting weekend.

If you’re going, book your rooms early. The hotel always sells out quickly.

More here: CJU Details

Kerri has been at CJ (and Be Free) pretty much forever. She’s always worked hard on behalf of affiliates and recently wowed us with her dynamic presentation at Commission Junction University. I even joked with a few folks that it looked like a GM talent show up there on the CJU stage.

I know first hand that Kerri is an enlightened individual who is passionate about CJ and the affiliate marketing industry as a whole and will most certainly have a positive impact.

Please join me in congratulating Kerri.

STOCKHOLM -(Dow Jones)- AOL, a majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. ( TWX), Monday said a cash tender offer, through an indirectly wholly owned subsidiary, to acquire TradeDoubler AB (TRAD.SK), a European provider of online marketing and sales solutions, was made for SEK215 per share.
…
AOL said the total value of the proposed transaction is SEK6.33 billion or about $900 million, for all TradeDoubler shares (including warrants that are subject to the offer).

TradeDoubler’s Board of Directors unanimously recommends that its shareholders accept the offer. In addition, shareholders representing in aggregate 20% of the outstanding shares, including TradeDoubler’s largest shareholder, Arctic Ventures, have irrevocably undertaken to accept the offer.

Not a done deal, but the board is in favor. Seems likely.

The UK affiliate bloggers (mooseontheloose and Fraser Edwards are talking about this already and their takes are interesting for sure.

This event is sort of the UK’s equivalent of Commission Junction (Valueclick) getting gobbled up by a big company. The reactions from the UK affiliates sound just like what you might expect on the same news of CJ — hoping for improved product, reports, etc. plus some fear of big-company changes. A sign of more to come?

This is big. Keep an eye on the tradedoubler news and commentary from the affiliate marketing community.

QFour is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California and will focus on acquiring and operating technology-based businesses in the online advertising and marketing services industry.

Sound familiar? Right out of the VCLK playbook.

Jeff’s new venture will be funded by a private equity firm, GTCR, which has a few billion dollars in committed funds to tap into.

What do you think, maybe he’ll buy CJ?

This year, in a few events that have sent many affiliate marketers reeling, Google has instituted Quality Score ratings to their Adwords advertisers’ landing pages. Pages and sites with low scores were rewarded with through-the-roof minimum bids for keywords, effectively pricing them out of the market.

With the introduction of a policy nearly two years ago from Adwords that only one ad would show per display url, affiliate marketers turned to creating their own landing pages for advertising traffic. These landing pages, typically a short way-point on the way to the merchant destination, have become a target of these quality score updates.

Google has become increasingly concerned with user experience, and now consider any affiliate pages with the sole purpose of driving traffic to a merchant as low quality. There have been at least two updates this year (one in April and another in July) that sent many affiliate marketers back to the drawing boards (or worse) to recover the lost traffic and revenues.

Yesterday, google announced via their Inside Adwords blog that there is another update coming in the next few days. Not only have they updated the algorithm, but these quality scores will now affect what shows in their content network (Adsense).

In the next few days, we will be making two changes to how AdWords evaluates landing page quality. First, we’ll begin incorporating landing page quality into the Quality Score for your contextually-targeted ads, using the same evaluation process as we do for ads showing on Google.com and the search network. Advertisers who may be providing a poor experience on their site will notice that their traffic across the content network decreases as a result of this change. Second, we’re improving our algorithm for evaluating landing page quality and incorporating landing page content retrieved by the AdWords system.

The bottom line, Google wants their advertisers to add value to the end user. They won’t say exactly what that means, but if there’s nothing to do on a landing page but click on an affiliate link, you can be sure that they’ll be coming down on that sooner or later.

What’s an affiliate marketer to do?

1. Link direct. as long as the merchant is ok with it, Google has no problem with affiliates advertising on behalf of merchants. Of course in doing so, you’re competing with merchants and other affiliates for the same spot in the search results.

2. Add Value. Google also has no problem with affiliate sites that offer something unique to visitors. If you’re going to drive traffic to your own website, do something that says, “this site has something to offer other than a link to a merchant.” Of course, since it’s all algorithm based, there are certainly things that help turn the dial toward “quality”. Privacy policies, contact information, unique content, and user signups are all things that have been mentioned in the past as things that smell like a “real” site and will raise quality score.

Personally, I aim higher and shoot for something that will pass the scrutiny of a human reviewer, hopefully passing the current quality score calculations and surviving any future updates. If I can do this successfully, I welcome the changes, not dread them.

Read Google’s landing page quality guidelines for some clues about what they’re looking for.

Listen for the screams. Like last time, if you’re lucky, sneaky, and/or smart enough to get through this next update, you’ll find some wide open search results as this holiday season ramps up.

The introduction from Tom Vadnais brings the typical inspiring presentation about “Relationships”. The most significant part from the presentation however is an announcement of the launch of the web services API. In a few words, the API allows advertisers and publishers programatic access to some features previously available only through the CJ account manager.

I love this stuff. I’m all about automating routine processes, and building tools to make our lives easier. The new API will give us access to product data, links, and advertiser information.

I wrote a bit more about CJ web services at my personal blog. Or, check out the CJ webservices interface for more information.

Equally important is that CJ is making great efforts to build a community around the APIs. At CJU, they announced a contest for the best application. First prize Dreaamweaver Studio 8. They promise more contests next year and CJU Horizon Awards for the best application.

They’ll also be fosterig a developer community with forum access and a directory to get your deveoped applications listed on the webservices website.

Nice move, CJ.

Going through my daily routine, I was hit hard with Shareasale’s temporary landing page. Today, in recognition of the events on September 11, 2001, Shareasale is closed for business and has logins available for “urgent” use:

ShareASale will be closed for the day of September 11, 2006, in memory of those lives lost, and to honor the heroes from that morning and thousands of other mornings when peace was chosen over war. The events of September 11, 2001 touched millions of us both here in the United States of America, and abroad. For each life that was stolen, a memory and a legacy was left behind to carry - and for those who carry them, life has changed forever.

We will never forget those who lost their lives, or those who gave their lives in the hope of saving another.

Recognizing that there may be urgent situations, although we hope that there are not, we have setup the following [login links follow]…

A website shutdown. That’s quite a statement. I am working today, but will acknowledge Shareasale’s gesture, not log in, and allow them to remain “closed” for me. I will work today and do what I can to send some traffic to SAS merchants. Because what’s truly impresive is that they’re giving all their proceeds from today to the Red Cross International Relief Fund.

AffiliateFairPlay awarded it’s first Fair Practices Award this week in Chicago. According to the website,

The AFP Fair Practice Award is a unique award within Affiliate Marketing recognizing a company or individual who has consistently engaged in activities which embody the principles of fair trade and competitive practices in affiliate marketing.

I can’t think of anyone more deserving. Congrats Brian.

Shmuly noted that the Google Checkout page has been updated, and it’s loaded up with merchants and armor piercing coupons.

They’ve done it before (and failed) with froogle. So what? This is a bit different.

First, it’s hitting paid search with that eye-grabbing shopping cart icon.

Second, unlike Froogle, the Google Checkout pages are indexable. I had to put ‘google’ in the search to see it, but it’s just a matter of time. They’ve got a bit of PageRank on google.com to pass around.

How’s that for a one-two punch?

I won’t give them a link, so you can go to Shmuly’s story to “check it out” for yourself.

[ADDED] Well at least, according to Benjamin Ling at Google, the checkout badge doesn’t affect Adwords Quality Score. (Though I’m sure Ben appreciates the suggestion.)