Members of the Amazon Associates programme can share products with their network by clicking on a Twitter icon within the affiliate menu bar or stripe. This generates a tweetable message and unique URL.

When people click on the link and make a qualifying sale you’ll earn a referral fees via the affiliate programme – the entry level is typically 5 per cent of the value of a sale.

You can foresee less wise individuals spamming their networks with inappropriate messages. But abuse will quickly be stamped out by using block and unfollow functions.

Used with care in conjunction with other online marketing efforts Amazon’s initiative could be a neat way of monetising content.

• A corporate finance team in the middle of due diligence efforts that is tracking conversations on Twitter amongst staff and customers of a target investment
• A Westminster lobby journalist tracking blog posts and tweets from prospective MPs in a bid to spot stories and build up candidate profiles in the run up to the election
• A tech company tracking the product development efforts of a competitor by monitoring tweets by members of the product development team

The very act of socialising an organisation means individuals share their motivations and information that can be tracked and used by third parties to competitive advantage. Be warned.

Parenting isn’t equitable between the sexes of course. But Dads are more involved than any other previous generation in the upbringing for their children and Dads as the primary career are increasingly common. At least that’s what our work for Tesco Baby tells us.

Yet this level of involvement isn’t spilling over into online conversations. Why is that? I polled my Twitter network on the topic last week and received a variety of answers.

Thanks to @markpinsent, @mynameisearl, @dannyWhatmough, @rhoughton, @andismit and @katiemoffat.

During the last week it has developed the Postcode Paper project in a bid to demonstrate its publishing prowess and put some of the data from the Government’s beta data.gov.uk data repository into people’s hands.

It’s a prototype of a service for people moving into a new area.

“In our exercise we imagined you might receive it after paying your council tax for the first time. It gathers information about your area [from data.gov.uk], such as local services, environmental information and crime statistics.”

How neat is that? Newspaper Club has seeded 50 copies of the Postcode Paper to a room full of civil servants in a hope that they will be excited by the possibilities and open up more government data to the public.

Newspaper Club is planning on launching early next year when it will offer a basic product of a 12–page, tabloid–size newspaper in black and white or colour in quantities from 5 to 5000.

“If you’re experienced with design software you’ll be able to upload a PDF to us and we’ll sort out printing and delivery. Or, if you need a bit more help, we’ll have a tool where you can upload your own text and pictures and we’ll help you lay it out on the page so it looks lovely. Then you can get it printed etc.”

(via @hrwaldram)

In light of Trafigura’s much-reported injunction, is it harmful to put lawyers – rather than communicators – in charge of protecting an organisation’s reputation? This is the topic of December’s @loggerheads debate in Communicate Magazine between Richard O’Hagan, a solicitor at Brittons and me.

My Twitter network is made up of a different group of people from my Twitter network. Facebook is family, friends, mates from school, university and stalkers. Twitter is mainly people from my professional life.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some crossover between the different networks. Life isn’t perfectly ordered. But inevitably when I push a message automatically from one network to another some folk get confused.

It could be about to get a lot worst. Thanks to a deal between LinkedIn (exclusively professional contacts in my network) and Twitter last week I can sync my LinkedIn feed with my Twitter feed, either automatically, or selectively by adding a hashtag #in to my tweets.

By syncing updates between various networks I’m not sharing a message with a network but have reverted to an aged-old broadcast model. Each network has a different audience and I should tailor my content appropriately.

Stephen Davis has made this case to me on numerous occasions. Have a read of this aptly titled blog post – Tweeters: Stop spamming my Facebook! I’m starting to see his point.

Technorati recently changed its blog authority ranking to reflect the real time potency of a blog rather than influence over time. Consequently only very high profile blogs are being rated.

The number of inbound links combined with Google PageRank was proposed as a solution at yesterday’s roundtable.

AdAge uses an algorithm based on PostRank, Yahoo InLinks, Alexa Points and Collective Intellect to generate it Top 150 league table. Author Todd Andrik also adds a subjective measure based on frequency, relevance and creativity.

Edelman’s Jonny Bentwood proposes a ranking methodology based on a broader range of variables. These are Google PageRank, inbound links (via Google and Yahoo!), RSS subscriptions (via Google Reader), frequency of postings and most recent post, comments and inbound Twitter links.

How do you measure the authority of a blog?

The report celebrates every aspect of the digital supply chain from affiliate marketing to web analytics. The report should be required reading for anyone working in the digital sector.

Here are some examples that I particularly liked.

eBags: a planning project by Silverpop to send out emails personally timed to generate best return. Conversation rates up 65 per cent

Idée image search: search for Creative Commons images posted on Flickr by colour palate

Innocent AGM promoted via Twitter: an excellent case study for the commercial use of Twitter as a communication channel

Kiva: microfinance venture capitalist matching finance in $25 chunks to entrepreneurs in the developing world

Nearest tube application: can I have an iPhone 3GS for Christmas please so that I can tinker with this augmented reality tube finder application from acrossair?

The Rubicon Project: an ad network that optimises web inventory for publishers and claims revenue improvements of 30 to 300 per cent

In an online report Trendwatching.com describes how nowism enables a brand to create an element of surprise and urgency. It is a rich opportunity for retail and marketing professionals.

Here’s what I learnt:

• Experience replaces the material abundance and eco-harming potential of consumer goods
• Consumers are contributing to and seeking real time experiences online
• New content lies a search term away from cumbersome, dull content
• Mobile connections satisfy a lust for an always-on connection to the network
• Demand for raw content delivered instantly is replacing carefully crafted production
• Instant commerce describes a new wave of alerts, pop-ups and vending concepts

If this feels you slightly uneasy, don’t fret; Trendwatching.com has predicted that this is a likely reaction.

“Expect nowism for many to become synonymous with (and blamed for) shallowness, short attention spans, exploding credit card debts, excessive focus on instantly satisfying urges, an unwillingness to face (and build) a better and sustainable future, [and] indifference to the past (and all its lessons).”

Trendwatching.com suggests that while these concerns warrant serious attention there are two crucial benefits to be gained from nowism namely experience over consumption and the democratisation of the individual and the organisation.