Cash For Tweets and Facebook Posts? Aussie Startup Pays You to Astroturf

An anonymous reader writes "While the celebs are already charging big money for their Tweets, an Aussie startup is ranking everyday people and turning them into product salespeople. After a successful start Down Under they have now hit Silicon Valley, but will Americans embrace selling to their friends?" From the article: "In a nutshell, individuals sign up to the Social Loot website and are assigned companies to promote to their circle of online friends. They are then paid on a sliding scale based on the amount of traffic their posts generate, and the quality of referrals and number of resulting sales. This is tracked by a code embedded in the links promoted by Social Loot’s spruikers."

Comments

This should be considered illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

This is advertising. It is also a lie. That's fraud, plain and simple.

Re:This should be considered illegal

[niftydude]

You make a good point. When the Alan Jones cash for comments scandal broke, he got absolutely slammed in court for not disclosing who was paying him to promote various things on his show.

The same should apply to tweets. They are broadcasts, and so the people making them should disclose whether it is advertising or not.