Twitter has been around for a while now, and has gained immense popularity as of recent. Because of this, Twitter has learned a lot about how people use the service. They have updated their terms of service, or the rules of how people can use Twitter.
It’s always important to stick to the terms of service for any web site or service to prevent your account from getting banned or deleted. If you use Twitter personally or for your business, now would be a good time to head over to their terms of service page and check out the new rules.
From Twitter’s own blog post about the updated terms of service:
These updates complement the spirit of Twitter. If we’ve left something out, or the nature of the service changes, then we’ll revisit the Terms – there’s a feedback link on the page. We’re in the process of sending an email about the revisions now. It’s important that everyone who tweets, develops apps, or is simply interested in Twitter understands that it’s not about the technology, it’s about how we all use the service that matters most.
One particular thing that I found interesting about the terms of service is that they’re keeping an open approach to advertising. Twitter indicates that their services may include ads targeted to content and searches on their service. This immediately makes me think of the targeting advertising networks on Google and Facebook, for example, where advertisers can make their ads show up when certain keywords or content is on a particular page.
Twitter doesn’t have advertising yet, but I would think that soon they probably will.
Also, if you use Twitter and have never reviewed their rules, now would be a good time to do that as well. The section on what is considered spamming and abuse should be of particular interest to any Twitter users.