Twitter changes Terms of Service – tweet ownership, advertising covered
Despite being three years old and growing at an exponential rate, Twitter is still very much evolving. It recently changed its Terms of Service to better reflect the changing nature of the site and how it’s being used. Areas which saw changes include the capacity for advertising to us, the users, and the always-controversial issue of ownership.
In a post on the Official Twitter blog, co-founder Biz Stone spelled out the changes in as simple and unconvoluted way as possible. He draws attention to the four most obvious areas likely to cause debate: spam and abusive behavior, APIs, advertising, and the question of ownership. While the changes concerning APIs and spam are minor, the others deserve looking at.
Ownership
A huge amount of people now use social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. And those people will happily write updates or upload media to the sites without considering the copyright issues doing so brings up. Facebook caused outrage last year by quietly changing its Terms of Service and stating that it effectively owned everything you do on the site.
Twitter sought to avoid a repeat of this situation, which saw a vocal minority of users kick up a fuss and which eventually forced Facebook to backtrack. Stone sums up the new ToS as, “Twitter is allowed to ‘use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute’ your tweets because that’s what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.”
The question is if Twitter is allowed to do all that with your tweets, what does the user really have left. Because I can’t think of anything else I could do with my tweets than what has been spelled out. The language used is so vague that I have to conclude Twitter can use all tweets on the site however they wish. And by being on the site I’m giving them permission to do so.
Advertising
Meanwhile, Twitter has so far been very resistant to the obvious lure of placing advertising on the site to actually make some revenue. But that could clearly change in the future. Stone sums up the new ToS as, “In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we’ve said before.”
A deeper delve brings the following passage concerning advertising on the site:
The Services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the Content or information on the Services, queries made through the Services, or other information. The types and extent of advertising by Twitter on the Services are subject to change. In consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Twitter and its third party providers and partners may place such advertising on the Services or in connection with the display of Content or information from the Services whether submitted by you or others.
Although Twitter still has nothing to announce in this area, it’s clear that advertising figures in the future of the site. Twitter has already taken baby steps in that direction and these revised ToS suggest that’s going to expand. And why not? Lest we forget that Facebook is expected to bring in around $300 million this year from advertising.
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