The other side of the coin is not wanting the dreaded reputation of "trying to sell insurance to my friends" .. where people avert their eyes when they see me coming! I don't want my twitter friends to think I view them as just a target customer .. I'd rather use twitter to develop better connections than earn a few % points.

Do opinions change any if we are talking about inserting links in a Facebook status update or is it the same thing? My inclination is that a higher number of twitter users would be able to discern an affiliate link whereas Facebook users would not … Curious to see if that platform generates any different thoughts on the subject…..

As the author of Advanced Twitter Marketing, let me state right up front that I post a lot of affiliate links on Twitter, and retweet a lot of other people’s links as well. But it’s important to remember that each person creates their own Twitterverse based on whom they choose to follow. I chuckle when I see comments like ‘trying to sift through’ – you only see the tweets from those you chose to follow, and can always unfollow them anytime.

Almost every usage for Twitter is legit as long as people are upfront about it – those who want to use it for business purposes and those who want to discuss what their kids had for breakfast are equally relevant to their own following.

My advice is simply to follow those you think have the same interests as you, and fine tune it as you see what each person tweets. Then just be yourself and let your followers do the same.