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Internet Twitter Changes Terms of Service to Allow Ads
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - September 11, 2009 3:15 PM

16 comment(s) - last by callmeroy.. on Sep 15 at 1:29 PM

Twitter says it may run ads and the subject is open to change

The use of social networking services is booming with users of all ages and demographics spending an increasing amount of time each day on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. Facebook and MySpace, however, have both found themselves in hot water with users before over changes to privacy policies and advertising.

Twitter is set to wade into the unclear waters of advertising on social networks with an expansion of its terms of service to allow for advertising. The terms of service were modified on Thursday for Twitter users to specify that the social network may run ads.

Twitter founder Biz Stone wrote, "We leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open, as we've said before."

Most websites sell advertisements to pay for services to be free for users and when a website is growing as fast as Twitter, more revenue is always in demand from investors and partners. Twitter's traffic is reportedly up 15 times compared to last year. The booming success of Twitter is also making it a target for hackers and nefarious users looking to attack the network.

Stone has said in the past that he is wary of annoying die-hard Twitter users with copious amounts of ads according to Reuters. Twitter has stressed that the changes to its advertising model are still in flux, and can change at any time.

Reuters quotes the changed terms of service reading, "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...."

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Nice

By damianrobertjones on 9/11/2009 3:41:46 PM , Rating: 3

For some reason Twitter never grabbed any of my attention. I use Facebook and the main part pretty much offers Twitter anyway which confuses me as to why people that use FB, also use Twitter?

Twitter:
I'm washing my teeth
They are now clean
I'm looking out of the window
I'm picking my nose
I'm eating a McDonalds
I hate McDonalds for making me fat
I'm going to sue McDOnalds
Someone said I was fat today, how rude
I'm now playing Hungry Hippos.

Oh man, I miss Hungry Hippos, what a game. Oh well. Tiki Towers on WinMob is quite good, also on the iPhone.

RE: Nice

By KeithP on 9/11/2009 3:58:02 PM , Rating: 2

There is a Twitter app for Facebook so that tweets go to your wall which can help integrate the two.

It always cracks me up to see people complain about some useless Twitter posts. By that kind of reasoning, you wouldn't use the web because you saw some pointless web sites.

If people are posting boring crap, don't follow them. I follow a handful of organizations/people on Twitter and find it quite useful and far better than most of the relentless noise that happens on Facebook. What kind of dog are you? What kind of car are you? Take this poll or that poll. It is a joke.

-KeithP

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RE: Nice

By invidious on 9/11/2009 4:03:32 PM , Rating: 5

Every twitter post is useless.

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RE: Nice

By mindless1 on 9/11/2009 5:10:31 PM , Rating: 2

Absolutely, the whole site is proof of how lame the average person is. Morons should be writing "I'm currently posting on twitter" "I'm currently posting on twitter" "I'm posting on twitter right now." LOL.

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RE: Nice

By bighairycamel on 9/11/2009 5:28:51 PM , Rating: 2

I'm inclined to agree with you since I hate the site, but I do follow InfinityWard on twitter to get my Modern Warfare 2 updates so they're not ALL useless (to me anyway).

Once the game is finally out then the site can lick the dust for all I care.

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RE: Nice

By Cypherdude1 on 9/13/2009 3:50:34 AM , Rating: 2

Twitter advertisements to your cellphone is a bad idea. Not everyone has unlimited texting plans. Twitter users are going to be mighty angry when they start getting ads on their cellphones and have to pay 25¢ for each one.

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RE: Nice

By deeznuts on 9/14/2009 2:44:14 AM , Rating: 2

You're an idiot for saying something like that. Obviously you don't use it so you have no clue. Is there uselessness on Twitter? Absolutely. But there is real communication and business going on, with Twitter.

When starting my own law firm I googled how to start a solo practice. Found some blogs by lawyers designed to help solos start their practice. Then discovered the legal blogging community, then the legal twitter community. Imagine 500 thought leaders in your industry. Imagine all 500 talking to each other. wouldn't you want to listen in? Yeah, unless you're a 16 year old kid who lives at home with mommy (not directed at anyone in particular ;)). That's what I use Twitter for. What people in my industry are reading, listening to, looking into doing.

Twitter has been extremely useful in expanding useful knowledge in launching my business. Marketing, systems, practice management software, etc. Stuff that would probably cost me money to learn before blogging and before twitter. Now I get it for free, just my time for reading. And I've gotten actual clients from facebook and twitter, and a ton by blogging. So monetarily there is value there as well.

Teenage usage of Twitter is really really low. if it was useless you'd see teenage usage higher ;)

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RE: Nice

By callmeroy on 9/15/2009 1:29:58 PM , Rating: 2

Everything you mentioned for the value of twitter was there for the taking w/o twitter.

Email..search engines...IM clients all existed well before twitter, so in that regard while to you twitter isn't useless, I'd refrain what the other person said and tell you simply it was NEEDED. Twitter is just an IM client slimed down its not a new concept at all.

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RE: Nice

By boogerlad on 9/12/2009 12:19:48 AM , Rating: 2

twitter and facebook are waste of time for kids that are obsessed about spreading info about their boring/useless lives. I wish that kids could be outside playing games like back then.

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RE: Nice

By dagamer34 on 9/12/2009 11:59:16 AM , Rating: 2

Twitter posts about yourself are mostly dumb (that's what Facebook is for). Twitter posts about stuff that doesn't involve you is where the meat is. Plus, it's also about having a conversation with random people who have similar interests. That's why Twitter is different from Facebook. *You would not give these people access to your photos or other personal information, would you?*

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Careful

By ebakke on 9/11/2009 3:41:29 PM , Rating: 3

Dear Twitter,

Screw this up, and your user base is gone. Good luck. Have a nice day.

RE: Careful

By Ramos22 on 9/11/2009 7:48:55 PM , Rating: 2

Except that the grand majority of internet users don't really care about ads and those that do care are most likely already using Mozilla + ad-block or something equivalent to it.

Example - Myspace... it may have been eclipsed by Facebook but it still has heavy usage by many internet users and it is littered with ads.

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RE: Careful

By scrapsma54 on 9/11/2009 9:08:30 PM , Rating: 2

Great, we are going to live in an age similar to star wars with advertising.

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RE: Careful

By mindless1 on 9/11/2009 10:59:01 PM , Rating: 2

BUT, didn't you see this coming? Twitter makes no sense from a business/investment perspective if they aren't targeting ads at people. As always you get enough people hooked THEN you slowly build up the crap they put up with. Just look at ebay. Or Google.

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Back to the 90's

By v1001 on 9/12/2009 12:53:14 AM , Rating: 2

I feel like I've stepped back 15 years of internet with twitter. It's functionality and layout is so ridiculously basic and limited. It's like everything is set up for 28k and pathetically small server drives or something. I always feel like my hands are tied too when I want to do more.

Now watch for the bait and switch.

By mixpix on 9/12/2009 1:39:21 PM , Rating: 2

People will complain about the possibility of ads, so twitter may switch the plan to charging money to use the service instead. I heard rumblings that they were thinking of doing that for celebs and businesses a while ago.