In an effort to avoid the painful experience that Facebook went through when users misinterpreted their new terms of service to mean that Facebook would own the rights to their content, Twitter announced its new terms of service were announced on Thursday and translated the legalese on the Twitter blog.
Here are the highlights:
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.
For twitter users, a number of concerns arise but the big issue is advertising and how it will affect your Tweets. The last thing you want attached to your tweet is a pop up ad. It dilutes the credibility of your tweet.
For the most part, Twitter has made all the right moves in the social media and real time search marketing arenas, no reason to believe that that will change in the short term.