Filed under: News, Web services, Microblogging
Twitter tweaks terms of service, may be paving the way for ads
The Twitter team just announced changes to the site's Terms of Service with a mass email and a blog post. The thrust of the post, written by Twitter's Biz Stone, is that not much has changed. The change deal with spam, use of Twitter's APIs, ownership of tweets, and the possibility of Twitter advertising, and Biz's description of them is peppered with phrases like, "as we've said before" and "according to the rules we've been operating under for some time."
Although not much has changed, Twitter may be using the announcement to start getting users accustomed to potential advertising on the site. The new terms have this to say about ads:
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.
Biz says this is about keeping options open, but being up front with users that ads are one of those options could hold off a firestorm if they start showing up later. You still own your own tweets, and Twitter can still broadcast them through all of its services (including APIs).
The entire document's a lot more clear and unambiguous, even in the areas where the basic effect of the terms hasn't changed. Basically, Twitter is growing up, and it needed a more grown up TOS document.
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