Nick Bergus: 'How I Became Amazon's Pitchman For A 55-Gallon Drum Of Personal Lubricant'

Be careful what you link to or you might unwittingly become the spokesperson for a drum of personal lubricant.

At least that's the lesson multimedia producer, writer and University of Iowa teacher Nick Bergus learned after he posted a link to his Facebook page of a vat of personal lubricant for sale on Amazon.

According to a post on Bergus' blog titled "How I became Amazon’s pitchman for a 55-gallon drum of personal lubricant on Facebook," he shared the link for the $1,500 barrel and wrote, "A 55-gallon drum of lube on Amazon. For Valentine's Day. And every day. For the rest of your life."

He was shocked when, a week later, his friends started telling him that they were seeing his post show up as a sponsored story next to their newsfeeds. Sponsored stories are a form of Facebook advertising that turn your friends' "likes" and comments about brands into mini-ads that can be viewed from your Facebook profile.

In other words Amazon had paid Facebook to use Bergus' post as an advertisement for its site, even though he had posted jokingly about the product and hadn't genuinely recommended that his friends purchase it.

Gizmodo writer Kyle Wagner doesn't find the incident very troublesome. "It's far more funny than it is alarming. Look, no personal information was disclosed or traded, no one was egregiously harmed," a href="http://gizmodo.com/5888669/facebook-ads-turn-unsuspecting-man-into-a-pitchman-for-giant-tub-of-lube" target="_hplink">writes Wagner.

It's possible we should all adopt this attitude since as Web-developer Jason Kottke points out, this sort of peer-to-peer advertising is only going to get more common. He writes, "Get used to this...promoted word of mouth is how a lot of advertising will work in the future."

(Just as an aside, a giant barrel of lube is hardly the weirdest thing you can buy on Amazon. Wolf urine, Sigmund Freud action figures and more quirky products abound on the retail website. Read on to see what other weird products you can find at Amazon.com.)

Comments

[mjredder]

12:35 AM on 02/29/2012

This is why I deleted my Facebook profile last month. They expect people to do free advertising work for them, while they collect the money. No thanks.

[Pandoras Folly]

06:02 PM on 02/29/2012

Im very sure you know already, but its not really deleted.

[MichaelMcKLA]

05:23 PM on 02/28/2012

Does his daughter get to shoot his carton of cigarettes?

[Ed Baker]

05:22 PM on 02/28/2012

I'm really glad I don't use Facebook - I don't think I could stand it if they turned me into a pitch-man.

What a liberty.

[David LaFontaine]

03:44 PM on 02/28/2012

Third graf from the bottom - you forgot to use the "Open Tag" brackets.

[gov111w]

01:38 PM on 02/28/2012

I heard that Obama is going to force the Catholic church to hand out this Personal lube for free outside their churches...

[pavementends42]

02:11 PM on 02/28/2012

Too many priest/altar boy jokes to contain myself.... "Altar boy confess your sins to meeeee, you will find the grace of God, inside my rectoooooooooooooryyyy!"

[MalteseTiger]

05:42 PM on 02/28/2012

The church would support contraception if alter boys could get pregnant

[JackHoffman]

03:56 PM on 02/28/2012

Always Obama.

[Lily P]

12:20 PM on 02/28/2012

They can do what they want with what you post on facebook. Any site you LINK to can use YOUR information teh way they want. It's in their TOS. That's why their IPO is worth millions. I'd get off there asap.

[kaptan]

02:23 PM on 02/28/2012

An other indorsment ? ....joke i agree READ TOS crarefully on any site before joining know what they are really after

[Ed Baker]

05:24 PM on 02/28/2012

I'm very glad I don't use it. I never want to be ANYONE'S pitchman.