Dino Baskovic Can’t Lose

Why the new Twitter terms are perfectly fair

Twitter has updated its Terms of Service to include changes in advertising, spam control and developer APIs.  If the last few years of watching users and the media react to TOS changes from sites like Facebook with pitchforks, then it's worth paying attention to details.  One of those, as clearly highlighted by Twitter's own blog post on the matter, concerns the ownership of one's tweets:

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.

This will strike the wrong nerve with many users, and I expect a mouthful from the usual pundits.  Even I scoffed at this statement: "Sure, I own my own tweets.  Sure, I do."

Then again, so what?  Who cares?  To me, this doesn't strike a nerve.  Rather, a chord.  The raw, harmonious riff that is reality.

Why should Twitter be able to sell your tweets to the devil, or alter its TOS in any manner its pleases?  Quite simple, really:

1. Twitter is free.  As in, free.
2. You accepted the TOS when you signed up, and I sincerely doubt you had your attorney present when you did.
3. You accepted said TOS without reading it, same as you accepted many a TOS without the slightest modicum of review.

If you don't like the new Twitter TOS, then leave.  That's right, kill your account.  Sayōnara.  Buh-bye.  Fifty million Twitter fans can't be wrong, so if it irks enough users, Twitter has little choice but to reconsider.  Maybe they will, as did Facebook when they halfheartedly backpedaled on Beacon or repeatedly refreshed its look and feel to the chagrin of many a user, even after they launched a community-based governance site. (Bonus points to both sites for going "open kimono" with these changes, not that most users appreciated the transparency.)

The fact of the matter is, you typically don't directly pay for any of these services.  You use them, and that in and of itself is valuable to the respective social networks in question.  You consume them, offer up a credit card here and there, maybe pony up for premium services such as with LinkedIn.  It's part of these sites being profitable, as is serving up sidebar ads and selling anonymous aggregate user data to third parties. 

Make no mistake, you are a valued stakeholder to Twitter and these other sites.  However, you are most likely not a shareholder.  Even if you are, you are but one voice, one vote among many.

So, suck it up or shut it up.  If neither of those options suit you, what's stopping you from switching to another social network, or (shudder!) starting your own?

Tags » facebook freedom governance linkedin open kimono profitability stakeholder terms of service transparency twitter (0 Comments)

• 10 September 2009
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