Twitter co-founder Biz Stone just posted news on an update on changes to Twitter’s Terms of Service, “leaving the door open” for advertising opportunities, clearing the air on ownership of Tweets, and updating guidelines around Twitter’s API. Stone also mentioned that the new Terms of Service address spam and abusive behavior on Twitter.
The privacy clause about Tweets is big, considering this was a significant issue for Facebook. Twitter has deflected talk of advertising on on the platform in the past, but it seems pretty clear that they’re looking into it now as a real source of income as they strive for revenues. Stone addressed the issue of Twitter’s revenue recently, which is a complex issue.
Here’s what Biz wrote in the post:
Advertising—In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we’ve said before.
Ownership—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.
APIs—The apps that have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem. You authorize us to make content available via our APIs. We’re also working on guidelines for use of the API.
SPAM—Abusive behavior and spam is also outlined in these terms according to the rules we’ve been operating under for some time.
Privacy when it comes to Tweets is an interesting issue, considering the whole Facebook angle. Granted, Twitter’s information is contained in 140 characters, so the depth of the information is slightly less intrusive.
The decision regarding revenue is a big one and has serious implications for Twitter’s valuation. Twitter is growing fast and the options are aplenty. But according to what Stone wrote today, it seems that Twitter is going to take it’s own sweet time to figure out the whole advertising strategy. The startup knows that it can make money with advertising if it needs to but obviously wants to figure out best one, considering the immense pressure. Twitter has tested text advertisements on the home page, ads in the stream, and text footer ads. Twitter also serves ads in the small box on profile pages for third-party Twitter apps, but doesn’t seem to charge the apps for the promotion.
For all the coverage about this company, one would think you’d get their name right, in the headline at least.
+1
Is owning your tweet that important?
seriously, have you seen how many t’s are in that title? you’ll forgive us for going overboard.
Twitter is already in a dilemma whether to go in the path of making revenues. Think this is the startup of Twitter to make money through advertisements. A nice move for attracting businesses.
Finally… welcomed updates to the TOS.
Your tweets belong to you…but we can do whatever we want with them.
The key part of Ownership that appears ambiguous is if Twitter can sell our tweets to others individually or in the aggregate. If it wants to sell filtered, targeted tweets to companies (processed more than the search engine), then it is not clear that the “owners” have given them the right to do so in the ToS.
Ownership—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.
If they are my tweets, than I’d like them to not use, copy, reproduce or modify.
Really, I don’t care…but it just seems like you can’t say that people own their tweets then say you can copy, reproduce or modify them. So you can create an add for Twitter that has a tweet of mine that you changed?
Tweet is 104 characters? it’s 140!!
Congrats Capt. Obvious, you found an obvious typo.
whatever they said..
true is: All Your Tweets are Belong to Us x]
surely if they can do what they want with Your tweet, and You can’t change way it’s done.. It’s like having a pizza slice that just has eaten by Great Spaghetti Monster IMO..
What they don’t mention is that they pushed a change this week that prevented Private Tweeters from publishing their Tweets to Facebook.
Impossible. What about programs using Twitter and Facebook status update at once? It’s twitt or facebook status? BTW how do they want to prevent that? It’s no use..
New Twitter terms of service r reasonable, basically inalienable non-exclusive copyright, which is normal for sites- we hve th same, authors retain all rights, but allow us to distribute their content.
All your tweet are belong to us.
Biz Stone’s post today says “ownership” but it some ways it is like co-ownership. I do think the route to ownership of certain derivatives remains with the author, and I also think the TOS are evolving in a good way to codify rights of attribution and identity. You have to layer a lot of different pieces to get there, but, no question, Twitter’s TOS now has the kind of license language that is more typical for publishers of user generated content. Posted tonight on this on my blog.
would it be possible to allow users to pick their license (like Flickr) on *the user’s* side of the ownership, while giving twitter’s side of the ownership whatever they wanted?
in a way similar that some wikipedia users multi-licensed their contributions with GFDL and CC BY-SA a couple years ago?
not sure how that would work out in the legal field
Of course they belong to us … any doubts ..
this sounds like bs. if my tweets belong to me, i should be able to disallow twitter to edit, copy , use for advertising etc. or else they should claim my tweets belong to “you and twitter”
I wonder if this is going to make way for problems with the fact that when you delete your tweet it really isn’t deleted. If they are your tweets, do we have rights against other websites publishing them? Sounds like like fun…
What they are saying is that you own your content but, if you are going to play with them in their house, you play by their rules, including what they do with your tweets, or take your tweets and go elsewhere.
So…where do they say they will give you all your tweets back if you ask? Or do they mean “We will crushingly destroy all your tweets if you choose to end your account”?
Do tweets even last more than 2 weeks? I thought they got erased after that.
Someone please provide the definitive answer on how one can recover the 6 months worth of pithy, cogent, brilliant tweets we’ve written…even though we don’t want to quit.
It goes without saying that there is no way to download all your tweets and upload them into Yahoo Meme as memes…right?
And what word is going to win by Christmas? Tweet or Meme?
Or will we have to say Micropost?
Tweet might win as a word like Kleenex did…
For me it’s ok
Has no one noticed that you could send a tweet to someone specifically, and their TOS allow them to take it, change it to something it was not to begin with. Then years down the road if they use that information and get into any kind of trouble with it, YOU are responsible and punishable for there misuse. Not them. I think it is crap.
Dont worry stupid cattle, it is still your milk, but we are going to tale it, boil it, put chemicals in it, and sell it to anyone we want. However if anyone gets sick, it is your fault because YOU OWN the milk and will be held liable.
That is like a law stating that others have the right to take your guns and use them, but if someone gets killed, you go to jail because it is your gun and you should have known better.
I would rather I DONT OWN IT so I can not be held liable for its misuse.
Manipulative scamming lawyer pricks.
These stories emerge periodically – OMG CHROME/WINDOWS/FACEBOOK/WHATEVER OWNS YOUR WORDS – and I always tell people the same thing: without an explicit transfer of rights, you own your words. Applications can’t possibly take those rights away from you via some sneaky language in the EULA.
Modern copyright law virtually everywhere that has copyright law grants immediate rights on creation. You have to sign a contract renouncing those rights and giving them away.
I heard rumors that in putting together the Twitter Wit book, Nick Douglas, the editor, had only secured rights with Twitter, because that’s all he needed to do. That didn’t seem very likely to me, and it didn’t fit what I found him saying about the book in articles, so I just wrote to Douglas and asked. Nope, he secured rights agreements with every individual tweet author, as he was required to in every nation where the book is likely to be sold.
I posted about this to calm the rumors and several people responded with “Oh, but he didn’t HAVE to do that…” which is nonsense and just proves that people love a good scare story and cognitive dissonance is a bitch.