Auto tweeting - guidelines and reporting bad practice

Tim

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Aug 17, 2010, 6:13:17 AM8/17/10

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Is there anything in the terms of use about best practice for auto-
tweeting?

I refer to the irritating practice an app automatically tweeting a
viral message from your account when you authenticate. e.g. "I just
got 50% somethingfactor on somelameapp.com, what's yours?"

It should be against the terms of use to do this without the *minimum*
of a warning message, e.g. "logging in will send a tweet from your
account" - best practice would be an opt-in checkbox or some such UI.

There needs to be a way for applications to be reported for doing this.

Tom van der Woerdt

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Aug 17, 2010, 10:21:30 AM8/17/10

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> Is there anything in the terms of use about best practice for auto-
> tweeting?

Go find out? http://twitter.com/tos

> I refer to the irritating practice an app automatically tweeting a
> viral message from your account when you authenticate. e.g. "I just
> got 50% somethingfactor on somelameapp.com, what's yours?"

As far as I know, that is not forbidden, as long as the application
explicitly mentions that the application will post a tweet.

> It should be against the terms of use to do this without the *minimum*
> of a warning message, e.g. "logging in will send a tweet from your
> account" - best practice would be an opt-in checkbox or some such UI.

Like I said

> There needs to be a way for applications to be reported for doing this.

I agree.

Tom

Taylor Singletary

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Aug 17, 2010, 10:25:34 AM8/17/10

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Principle #1 of the Twitter Platform is: "Don't Surprise Users." -- And this type of activity does exactly that and is therefore against the spirit of the developer guidelines. http://dev.twitter.com/api_terms

You can report misbehaving applications at: http://twitter.com/help/escalate

Taylor

Tom van der Woerdt

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Aug 17, 2010, 2:32:02 PM8/17/10

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I have a feeling that I know which app you are talking about - my
timeline is also flooded with tweets from that app.

Tom

On 8/17/10 8:28 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Yeah, that thing bit me too - I deleted the tweet it sent. There *is* a
> warning on the page that it will send the tweet, though. I think the
> Twitterverse will jump on him and he'll pull it down.
>
> --
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> http://borasky-research.net http://twitter.com/znmeb
>
> "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." - Paul
> Erdos

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

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Aug 17, 2010, 2:28:13 PM8/17/10

to twitter-deve...@googlegroups.com, Taylor Singletary

Yeah, that thing bit me too - I deleted the tweet it sent. There *is*
a warning on the page that it will send the tweet, though. I think the
Twitterverse will jump on him and he'll pull it down.

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
http://borasky-research.net http://twitter.com/znmeb

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." - Paul Erdos

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

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Aug 17, 2010, 2:42:14 PM8/17/10

to twitter-deve...@googlegroups.com, Tom van der Woerdt

I'm seriously considering a blog post about it - someone talk me out of it!

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
http://borasky-research.net http://twitter.com/znmeb

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." - Paul Erdos

Scott Wilcox

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Aug 17, 2010, 2:45:25 PM8/17/10

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Do it, do it, do it!

teehee!

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

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Aug 17, 2010, 4:20:27 PM8/17/10

to twitter-deve...@googlegroups.com, Scott Wilcox

I'm in the middle of a release push for the Social Media Analytics
Research Toolkit. If the thing is still around when I get that done,
I'll take up cudgels and pitchforks and torches, assuming RWW,
Mashable and Techcrunch haven't ground it into the soil by then. ;-)