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Twitter announces new terms of service for twitterers
Yesterday, twitter.com/1strank and all twitters got mail from “Biz Stone” regarding the new terms of services of twitter. Some issues like advertising, tweet ownership, APIs and Spam.
“The revisions more appropriately reflect the nature of Twitter and convey key issues such as ownership. For example, your tweets belong to you, not to Twitter,” says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone.
With regards to advertising, they’re leaving “the door wide open.” Stone says they want to “keep their options open.” So nothing concrete there.
As far as APIs, Stone says developers using Twitter APIs authorize Twitter to make content available. There is a separate set of guidelines for APIs that can be found here. It is still a work in progress. Current guidelines are as follows:
- Identify the user that authored or provided the Tweet, unless you are providing Tweets in an aggregate form or in anonymous form in those exceptional cases where concerns over user security and anonymity are involved.
- Maintain the integrity of Tweets and not edit or revise them. Tweets may be abbreviated for display purposes and as necessary due to technical limitations or requirements of any networks, devices, services or media.
- Get each user’s consent before sending Tweets or other messages on their behalf. A user authenticating with your application does not constitute consent to send a message.
- Get permission from the user that created the Tweet if you want to make their Tweet into a commercial good or product, like using a Tweet on a t-shirt or a poster or making a book based on someone’s Tweets.
Spam guidelines are the same and can be found here.
The Tweet ownership stuff has already received some criticism for further clouding an already unclear subject. “If Twitter can do what they want with ‘our’ tweets, including reproduction for their own (financial) gain, what do we actually ‘own’?” asks Shéa Bennett at Twittercism. “If Twitter loses our data, closes our accounts or goes out of business, do we still own those tweets? Or are they retrievable in any way?”
Twitter is yet to finalized there terms of services. While stone said that they are still open to the feedbacks, will make the changes accordingly if they find it be justifying enough. You can send a feedback message through feedback link on terms page.
