The more I think about this situation, the less I like it. At first I was happy that the service I work on was not banned by this ToS change. Even though we use twitter data for monetisation, we don't insert data into timelines.
However, when I look at the services that have now been banned, I can't see any warning signs other than that they were competing with Twitter for monetising their data. This is what my service does. Even though it's not currently banned, doesn't it make sense to abandon development now? The best I can hope for it that it *isn't* wildly successful, so Twitter doesn't consider it competition... Every time I read Twitter's explanation for the situation, it reads as "we know our monetisation strategy can't compete with third parties in the short term, so we're banning all competition". Hardly conducive to fostering the best solutions, particularly when Twitter will always have the upper hand with their "official" monetisation platform and analytics for resonance, anyway. What's even worse is the the new ToS is *still* completely ambiguous. Until I saw Peter's post here I had no idea that the ban was only in the publishing end, not insertion. Of course all this makes sense from Twitter's perspective, but for third parties... that just leaves us on an ever changing playing field with invisible goals. I could have lived with rules and rev share additions, but completely banning competition... not so much. Concerned. James PS what's the point of this paragraph from the blog post? "We understand that for a few of these companies, the new Terms of Service prohibit activities in which they’ve invested time and money. We will continue to move as quickly as we can to deliver the Annotations capability to the market so that developers everywhere can create innovative new business solutions on the growing Twitter platform." a slap in the face? We understand that we've wasted your time and money, so here's the next thing for you to waste time and money on. No guarantees, no apologies. On May 26, 6:07 pm, "Dean Collins" <d...@cognation.net> wrote: > Dewald, it's because you have amateurs running the zoo that are learning as > they go. > > Honestly my opinion is that it's Twitters rights to change the rules as they > go - it's their network and their right to do so, but it's also my right as > an investor in application development to not invest any more time or money > on Twitter until they bring in a management layer that has experience I > building ecosystems and knows how to encourage sustainable development. > > Can you imagine if salesforce pulled a stunt like this? > > Cheers, > Dean > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: twitter-development-talk@googlegroups.com [mailto:twitter-development- > > t...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Dewald Pretorius > > Sent: Monday, 24 May 2010 9:27 PM > > To: Twitter Development Talk > > Subject: [twitter-dev] Re: TWITTER BANS 3rd PARTY ADVERTISING > > > Liz, > > > You are 100% correct in summarizing the problem. Not only were those > > businesses built with the full knowledge of Twitter, Twitter even had > > specific rules governing sponsored tweets (had to be clearly marked as > > sponsored, etc.). > > > I'm really baffled by this decision of Twitter, because I don't > > understand how they expect to have integrity and trust with developers > > while doing this type of stuff. > > > Right now we are all being pointed to Annotations as the holy grail of > > new development. But how do we know that they won't yet again change a > > rule in the future that will kill businesses that were built on top of > > Annotations? > > > On May 24, 3:56 pm, Liz <nwjersey...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Peter, I think the problem is that business have been created, > > > received funding and developed over the past year, with the full > > > knowledge of Twitter, and this just undercuts & destroys them. > > > > I think people can understand the rationale (and the desire for > > > Twitter to eliminate competition) but this is a policy decision that > > > should have been made over a year ago. Twitter should have included > > > this in an earlier terms of service instead of giving an implicit > > > "okay" to services like Sponsored Tweets which has turned into a > > > successful company. > > > > It also seems disingenuous that the blog post says that a "guiding > > > principle" of Twitter is that "We don't seek to control what users > > > tweet. And users own their own tweets." and allow adult-oriented > > > content and photos but for some reason, users can't Tweet ads. That > > > sounds like control of content to me. > > > > Liz
