This is not the first time this week that individuals have seen their social media-related identities hijacked for advertising purposes. Crunchgear recently reported a slew of tweets linking to phishing sites. Essentially a bot account has been pushing out fake retweets from celebrities in the hopes that loyal fans will see the RT@aplusk's and RT@oprah's and make the mistake of clicking through.

While on the one hand it's incredibly flattering that your endorsement of a product might actually influence others' beliefs and attitudes. It's probably best to monitor your identities to ensure that your good reputation remains in tact. And if you don't mind endorsing products in your profiles, you might as well get paid for it through a service like Magpie or Izea.

UPDATE: After publishing this article, we received a note from Facebook representative Annie Ta saying, "Basically, any ads you currently see doing this are coming from third-party ad networks and are only running within the canvas page of an application, which is controlled by third party developers rather than Facebook. We constantly review our policies to ensure that these third-party ads meet the expectations we have for user experience."

We were disappointed when a browser script showed us a Magpie redirect behind a shortened link in a Skype testimonial today. Then we used a search on the service BackTweets to find out who else is buying fake Tweets on the service. It's so revolting and pitiful that it's kind of sad.

Update: As a number of commenters and at least one of these companies have pointed out, it's not the companies themselves buying these ads - it's most likely outside affiliates. So direct your frustration to whoever is in charge of affiliate programs at these companies, not in house ad buyers. Update again: Box.net's participation in this program has been de-activated by Magpie based on the comment left by the company's CEO below. The company says they'd been trying to remove their affiliate links from Magpie prior to this story running.

Update: Four days later Stubhub tells us they have also given Magpie the boot from their affiliate program.

Apple

Skype

Cisco's Flip

The company that makes those Flip cameras just got bought by Cisco for almost $600 million dollars - because everyone loves the Flip.

Box.net

We know and like the people at online storage company Box.net. Their CEO didn't respond to our inquiry about the use of Magpie, but we'll give him a hard time about it next time we see him. The last user in this picture is an account that just aggregates other peoples' Tweets about farting - and then throws in Magpie ads. Classy all around!

Update: Box.net's participation in this program has been de-activated by Magpie based on the comment left by the company's CEO below.

StubHub

Ok, so StubHub might not be the kind of company you'd be shocked to find out participates in this kind of thing, but the informal language and appeals to family in this one struck us. Update: Four days after publication of this post, Stubhub contacted us to let us know that they are no longer allowing Magpie to be part of their affiliate program.

FatCow

Ok, we don't know FatCow Web Hosting from a hole in the wall but the language here again is really remarkable. Dear FatCow "fans": you are allowing yourself to be turned into a lying robot zombie for a few dollars a month! Have you no shame?

So there's the Twitter-sphere for you! Bring on "real time search," bring on a globally connected community, bring on vapid, vile, stupid shilling. It all seems pretty sad to me. And to the advertisers out there - is this cynical scheme the best you can do to engage with all the new ways people are communicating online? That's pretty bad.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner. We won't try to sneakily sell you anything!

Now, there's another service that - much like RSS-based advertising - offers to pay you for advertisements that run in the midst of your tweet stream. Meet Magpie, an ad network for Twitter.

"You allow us to twitter in your name. Thus, it's primarily your followers who'll see the magpie-tweets. We're targeting them, not you."

But how much money could you be earning? To test it, I ran a couple of user names through the Magpie estimator to see.

Personally, I stand to rake in an additional 55 Euros a month - roughly $70 US. Richard could earn more than three times that amount, 184 Euros. And Marshall could be reimbursed around 181 Euros a month.

But what about the heavily followed Twitter crowd? Kevin Rose, for example, could stand to make an extra $8,000 a month, Leo Laporte around $15,000 a month, and Barack Obama? A projected $64,000 a month. (Which, ironically, is more than he would make if he gets the job he's gunning for.)

Now, I'm what you would call an "avid" Twitter user. And I have to admit that I'm capable of tweeting useless drivel and alienating followers with the best of them. But there's something about the fact that I'm actually the one doing that inane tweeting that makes it slightly more palatable. I think.

Magpie changes all that. With Magpie, the annoying tweets could - ultimately - be beyond your control. In fact, this "ad in the tweet stream" concept is exactly what people fear Twitter will be doing with their tweet streams in the not too distant future - inserting advertising into conversations that heretofore have been wholly controlled by each user.

Magpie is promoting the service as a way to get into the tweet stream of "popular twitterers." One has to wonder, if those Twitter users - especially those who are already seeing value in their Twitter use - are going to be willing to trade their influence for cash.

I, for one, will keep posting annoying drivel on my own - for free.