I received this question to the Ask Jangro submission form a week or so ago...

Isn't this an affiliate? http://twitter.com/kindle_book

Here's the site:

It's a twitter account that appears to echo an RSS feed of all the new books available on the Kindle. This twitter user has almost 3000 followers. Surely some of those are bots, but not all.

And yes, that twitter account is run by an Amazon Associate. You can tell by the parameter in all the links, like this:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002SRL3D6/?tag=gkindle-20

The question continues...

Why does Amazon arbitrarily choose whom to crack down on and whom not to? From anecdotal evidence, it seems that Amazon's affiliate managers have a lot of discretion as to whom to suspend, and they let their personal and political biases show in their suspension-notification emails.

Since I haven't seen any suspension-notification emails that demonstrate personal or political bias, I cannot really comment on that.

Amazon and Twitter

Perhaps you are referring to the buzz that went around this past summer where Amazon refused to compensate on traffic referred through a twitter link.

After dozens of bloggers wrote about the issue chastising Amazon, it started to become clear that Amazon isn't patently against their associates promoting through Twitter. They just insist that any sites where their links are posted are approved by Amazon.

Shawn Collins recently posted his interaction with Amazon on this exact issue, where Amazon approved his Twitter account for him to post affiliate links.

And just today, Amazon just announced their "Share on Twitter" feature to Amazon Associates.

Amazon does allow links on Twitter and other third party blogging and microblogging platforms. Actually, I just noticed that Amazon now has a whole Social Media FAQ.

Finally, to address the question, "Why does Amazon arbitrarily choose whom to crack down on and whom not to?"

Again, I may not have all the evidence that you are looking at, but I suspect that this may only seem arbitrary. We've seen that Amazon will crack down on sites that aren't approved to run links. Without knowing that rule, it may seem random.

Beyond that, Amazon surely looks at whether a publisher is adding value in their eyes. That by definition is arbitrary. Affiliate managers everywhere must use their discretion when approving and denying affiliates. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.

Is it always fair? Probably not. But as my 8th grade Social Studies teacher used to say, "Life isn't fair."

If you've got a specific case, ask Amazon about it. Shawn Collins had a pretty reasonable exchange with them. I'd think you could too.

Does It Add Value?

The acid test that I like to ask about any affiliate model is "value", to the consumer and to the advertiser. So let's look at this twitter account under the "value lens".

I'd say that on the surface, this is a good way for people who like to consume their news on Twitter to find out about new kindle books.

As long as this twitter account isn't being spammy, I don't really see anything wrong with it. If only hundreds of those followers are real people, they're following for a reason.

This publisher may want to put some disclosure on this page in light of the new FTC endorsement guides that were published recently.

Seems to pass the value test to me. What do you think?