Twitter Is Thinking About a Business Model
Twitter just announced modified terms of service that show the company has started to think about potential business models. The modified terms of service deal with advertising, APIs and the ownership of data. These changes mean that Twitter might offer inline contextual advertising and charge for APIs.
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I love that the submitter is liable to twitter and their partners if they distribute material that the submitter lacks rights to redistribute. People who agree to this are foolish.
“You are responsible for your use of the Services, for any Content you provide, and for any consequences thereof, including the use of your Content by other users and our third party partners. You understand that your Content may be rebroadcasted by our partners and if you do not have the right to submit Content for such use, it may subject you to liability. Twitter will not be responsible or liable for any use of your Content by Twitter in accordance with these Terms. You represent and warrant that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the rights granted herein to any Content that you submit.”
by the ways thanks for pointing this out. very cool … makes me appreciate my readers more for their eagle eyes.
Hey what can one say – they are doing what others (cough cough… facebook) are doing. :-) I love the fact that you actually spotted this. ;-)
So the Twitter boys are saying people are responsible for the things they post?
Why is that a problem? It’s not like (for the most part) Twitter controls what anyone posts, so why should they be responsible if a problem occurs? If they did attempt to to filter out certain kinds of links, pictures, etc. .oh, the uproar that would cause.
Take responsibility for your actions. it’s easy.
Disclaiming liability is not the same as not having potential liability. Twitter can say whatever they want and try to push liability to its users, but I guarantee you that there will be a major court case at some point about whether or not it is the user or Twitter who is liable.
Twitter has been an enigma as far as business model is concerned. They are yet to make any revenues and despite that they are getting high valuations. In my article on Telecom Circle, I have listed various possible revenue models for Twitter. The article can be accessed at http://www.telecomcircle.com/2009/08/the-enigma-called-twitter/