Affiliate programs and injecting ads into people's news feeds are two complete different and largely unrelated ways of monetizing. If pinterest goes the route o

Affiliate programs and injecting ads into people's news feeds are two complete different and largely unrelated ways of monetizing. If pinterest goes the route of sponsored pins (or whatever they might be called) instead of affiliate commissions on product links, they'd be out of their minds and hopefully be laughed out of existence. This sponsored crap is the best way I've yet seen to piss off your users (and in twitter's case, alienate third-party developers, although that's because they've made some poor choices). Ads work on google because there's intent to buy (or at least learn about a product category) Samsung buying ads against the iphone5 trending topic on twitter is supposed to make me want their latest and greatest? Good luck with that. Pinterest just needs to tag links with affiliate codes whenever possible. I'd bet amazon alone could make them serious money with zero detriment to the user experience.