Twitter To Block Third-Party Paid Tweets 83
tekgoblin writes "Today Twitter announced on its blog an upcoming change to its Terms of Service. The change will not allow anyone to promote paid tweets through the Twitter API. Twitter had announced previously that it will be releasing a 'Promoted Tweets' platform for advertisers that will be non-intrusive and will always be relevant to the Twitter timeline. This action taken by Twitter could be a hard hit for small publishers that relied on the paid tweets that will be blocked shortly. Depending on how expensive the Twitter Promoted Tweets will be, this will show us whether or not Promoted Tweets will be good for the little guy."
Violation of free speech! (Score:4, Funny)
LUL
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This post is to alert you to /.'s judgement.
You're not funny.
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Think of it like being arrested for kiddy-fiddling: you're automatically guilty until enough people/coins speak up to prove your innocence.
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Britpop [youtube.com]?
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Are you trolling?
Clearly
Twitter is not the government.
Yet.
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...Twitter is not the government.
Are you sure? Sometimes it seems like the ratio of twits is quite high...
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If you want to spam you have to pay for it.
They certainly have the right... (Score:1, Insightful)
... to profit from their self-destruction and not share it with others. The only reason why one might consider this a strange move is that Twitter is the epitome of superficial image cultivation, so it seems natural for its users to see it as an advertising channel.
This is our turf... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know why (Score:1)
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I don't know why, either, but that's because I don't really understand it. I even skimmed the parts of the Twitter post, and still don't get it because it uses too much new age business gobbledygook terminology - e.g.,
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You're right though, doubledoubletwaddlespeak left right and centre.
Re:I don't know why (Score:4, Insightful)
Some twitter viewing applications slide ads into people's twitter streams. Now that Twitter is introducing an official paid advertising service that slides ads into people's twitter streams, they want control over that revenue stream.
All of the incomprehensible corporate speak is smoke-and-mirrors. Sadly, it will be smoke and mirrors that lots of people will fall for. I've shown junk like this to rather intelligent friends, who then nodded and said "that makes sense." The fact that they actually agreed with it was only slightly less shocking than the fact that they survived the experience without their BS detectors exploding.
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And anyone uses them?
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>It is critical that the core experience of real-time introductions and information is protected for the user and with an eye toward long-term success for all advertisers, users and the Twitter ecosystem. For this reason, aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.
In terms that a software engineer can understand, it means that Twitter has hired Dogbert Consulting.
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Handy Translation guide:
critical to the core experience = critical to our pocketbooks
real-time introductions and information protected for the user = Marketing content limited to what we are paid for, for our monetary benefit
long-term success for all advertisers = Advertisers that pay us are the only ones whose ads show up
Twitter Ecosystem = The users who visit the site and click on our ads
inject paid tweets = Ads introduced by third party software makers / web sites syndicating tweets, by disp
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Short and curlies translation of the newspeak for the rest of us:
If you're an advertiser, pay us to use our service so that you can use our users as your advertising mouthpiece. In the end, you're probably going to get paid by people buying your crap, so we want our share up front.
If you're a user, you can manually type in an ad for something if you want. We can't tell you what not to type, as long as it stays within a reasonable guideline (don't talk about diddling your granddaughter, old man). You just ca
Twitter wants to charge the advertisers (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course Twitter isn't going to allow advertisers to use their API for free. They will muzzle any attempts to do so in the name of preventing spam, then turn around and charge them for the privilege.
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They have to monetize their service somehow. This seems perfectly logical and reasonable to me.
Certainly no disagreement here. I just find it a bit irksome that Twitter is glossing over this move with platitudes about preserving the relevance of their service and fostering "innovation" when it's obvious to anyone that they're just acting to protect their business model.
Sucks for this company... (Score:4, Informative)
Just read that A new paid tweet service was launched in japan. [asiajin.com]
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Thanks to network effects, the bigger the player the more valuable the property(architecturally, making your own Twitter, with blackjack, and hookers, and slightly more characters per message would be trivial. Getting anybody to care would be an uphill slog. Same goes for something like Facebook.) Thanks to the ever more nua
Oh my god! (Score:3, Insightful)
And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
This action taken by Twitter could be a hard hit for small publishers that relied on the paid tweets
If you "rely" on "paid tweets," go fuck yourself and find an actual business model. Seriously.
Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
If your business model is entirely dependant upon another company's service (Twitter, Facebook, Paypal, eBay, etc), then you have no guarantee that your business model will exist tomorrow. Not the best way to run a business.
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Zynga would dispute that. They can shut up shop right now and the owners can walk away with hundreds of millions dollars in their pockets. Not bad for a few crap games that relied on social networking sites. They've made themselves a lot of money, which was their aim. Company longevity was never a concern.
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Plus, it's not as if the Facebook side of things is all that hard to replace now that they're huge. Folks would likely follow Zynga off-site onto a new platform.
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The fact that Netflix has done just fine so far shows that they could continue just fine if Amazon were to fold or shutter this service. Similarly, they could change payment processors or shipping providers if needed and continue to provide nearly identical services. Heck, they can even roll their own software or hosting services due to their size.
However, if you are a 'Twitter ad agency', then you're boned when Twitter changes the rules to push you out. One should at least be a 'social-networks ad agen
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You missed "iPhone" (or more specifically the App Store) in that list.
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Yeah, that's actually a pretty good example. Of course, it's also mitigated somewhat because the developer could switch to Android or Blackberry.
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Netscape and Windows are products, not services.
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go fuck yourself and find an actual business model.
So a paid tweet is what I thought it was. Thanks for clearing that up.
"We don't seek to control what users tweet." (Score:5, Informative)
In order to continue to provide clarity, our guiding principles include:
1. We don't seek to control what users tweet. And users own their own tweets.
So users are still free to tweet "Blue Sun makes the BEST saddles in the verse! #blueSun #spaceHorse" and receive payment from Blue Sun, but apps can't display ads in the feed that aren't coming from twitter?
Meh, fine by me.
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Simplified version... (Score:2)
"That's a whole lot of stupid."
deja vu all over again (Score:1, Insightful)
in 2000/2001 wise man once say "web company make no money is web company that go bye bye"
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"That" and "which" are not interchangeable.
Agreed, but the summary could have also used parenthesis to denote precedence.
((This action taken by Twitter could be a hard hit for small publishers) that relied on the paid tweets) that will be blocked shortly.
OR a complete rewrite to eliminate passive voice.
"This will hurt spammers."
Pooping (Score:5, Funny)
Pooping. Poop is coming out now.
This tweet brought to you by Ex-Lax. Helping you to "go", when the going gets tough.
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This tweet brought to you by Ex-Lax. Strong enough to break up a Fail Whale. Gentle on your stomach.
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This tweet brought to you by Ex-Lax.
Smooth move!
Wait, what? (Score:2)
This action taken by Twitter could be a hard hit for small publishers that relied on the paid tweets that will be blocked shortl
By "publisher" you mean "advertising middle-man"? Or maybe "Another business whose sole revenue relies on being the third or fourth party in an advertising imprint?" Cry me a river. Alternatively-- work on a real business plan, selling actual service of value, and see how that works instead.
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I think they mean small publishers as in companies that have twitter accounts for their companies that tweet about coupons, deals, etc. I might be totally wrong though as I don't use twitter.
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What is a "paid Tweet"? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what is a "paid Tweet"?
If Barack Obama tweets about politics, and he is paid to be the President of the USA, is that a "paid tweet"?
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You're being purposely obtuse, try to actually think of what a reasonable thing could mean. In this case, it's a tweet that you are paying someone to write. Is barack obama being _paid to tweet?_ NO. So it's not a paid tweet.
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You're being purposely obtuse, try to actually think of what a reasonable thing could mean. In this case, it's a tweet that you are paying someone to write. Is barack obama being _paid to tweet?_ NO. So it's not a paid tweet.
He's on the clock at all times, so yes, it's a paid tweet by that standard.
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Other 'flavors' of paid Tweets could include:
- A celebrity that hires a publicity company to manage their Twitter feed.
- A company that uses a Twitter feed to announce new products, contests, feedback.
- A famous Twitterer who gets a kickback for mentioning a specific product
- A person who really likes a specific brand of cookie / restaurant / etc
Do they have a plan to separate out that fourth person from the previous three?
advertising tweets? (Score:1)
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but if advertising tweets start appearing in my feed I'll be leaving twitter...
That's rational, but what I don't understand is why anyone would begin using Twitter in the first place.
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On no! Organize a LeaveTwitter Day! Hurry!
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Nope, sorry guys, I can't bring myself to finish that sentence.
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It isn't in the feeds yet, just at the top of the search results. They're supposed to be relevant, but some of my programming searches get Starbucks and Virgin Airlines promo-tweets. In the grand scheme of things it is small peanuts compared to a) Google Ads on Google searches and b) big companies that slap large Flash adverts and more all over their articles/"blogs" while splitting the article into multiple pages for more ad views.
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I agree it's not as bad as flash ads all over blogs as long as it stays in search results but Google Ads on searches don't really bother me. Maybe you see something different to me but I only get ads in the form of paid links on the far right of the search results.
Fine by me (Score:2)
Almost all the people I follow are "real people" and not organizations. There is one Si Valley VC incubator I follow that's sort of interesting; but I only started following them recently. I'm not commercial so I don't care. If people who WANT to get spammed help support Twitter, fine by me. I've found Twitter to be the "I don't have to deal with Farmville invites, or drunk pictures" version of Facebook. If they were to clutter their UI, that would kill them for me. This won't.
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Tell me it's a collection of flamebait for pendants! (emphasis mine)
Priceless.
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They are not regulating what tweets other people can send by this. They are regulating tools using the twitter API that display tweets. Such as a Twitter iPhone client (for example), that allows you to search for tweets, without using the website.
The new rule means that if the client uses the Twitter API, they cannot inject paid Tweets into the Tweet stream that they display.
These "paid tweets" are essentially ads created locally by the client and made to look like real Tweets from someone else.