The interweb

In my many conversations with people in my halls I’ve discovered just how naive they can be about various marketing techniques, they’ll pick up on overt ads onfacebook (their favourite haunt) and won’t click on them, but won’t pick up on the more subtle things.

I’ve noticed that some facebook applications cleverly insert affiliate links, which if used by people will offer them certain rewards like worthless “in-game” money which is hard to come by for the user but costs the creator nothing. Said creator is instead rewarded through whoever signs up to the products/websites they advertise using the aforementioned affiliate links, something the people I know have never picked up on, and probably wouldn’t have had I not mentioned it.

“Right, so you sign up to eBay using the link provided and get X amount of useless in-game money?” “Pretty much.” “Why would you? It’s a site you would use on a regular basis anyway…” “Yeah, but this way I can get stuff for my character!” “The guy who made this is making money off you.” “He is? I don’t ca…*collapses from head-wound*”

Something along those lines anyway, slightly worrying considering that these affiliate schemes tend to pay not only for sign-ups but also purchases, at least for a time.

And I’ve just given the very obvious game away, haven’t I?

Guess I should read up on writing facebook apps.