If you are a regular LinkedIn user you will have noticed that you can add "Applications" to your LinkedIn profiles. One of those applications that you can add is a nice app from Amazon that lets you add and share books that you like. While this is a great app and is great for sharing information, I don't think most people know that LinkedIn is making money off your book reviews.

Everytime someone clicks on a link that you have for a book in your profile and goes to Amazon, LinkedIn gets a cut of the money from your review. What LinkedIn has is an Amazon Associates account and they use the tracking id "LinkedIn-20" on all links that go over to Amazon. When someone purchases a book or in some cases something else on Amazon after they were referred over there, they get a cut of the sale.

I have problems with this because it is using people's reviews of books to unwittingly generate money for LinkedIn. I would like to see LinkedIn add the ability to add your own Amazon Associates ID into the application and give users a chance to make money off their own reviews.