[twitter-dev] TWITTER BANS 3rd PARTY ADVERTISING
Mo
or at Chirp before I built up a team? Thanks.
It's fitting that the author of the post is named Dick.
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/05/twitter-platform.html
Mo
surprise. It's the fact that I've been participating in events,
developing, networking, and building a team all year AFTER getting
affirmations from individuals at Twitter that I had nothing to worry
about in building a Twitter advertising platform.
I've seen a lot of bad behavior from ad platforms that incent users to
tweet for short-term financial gain, so I understand the need to tidy
up from time to time. But, this was more like sand-blasting the living
room in order to do some dusting.
Maybe you guys have a Google Adsense-type shared revenue model (or
something similar) in the works that enables those who know how to
properly add value and relevance to generate an income stream in a way
that is beneficial to Twitter users and Twitter. That would make
sense.
Another great strategy would have been issuing a warning to bad
players while also incenting everyone to build mechanisms to support
Promoted Tweets. There are a number of paths that could have been
chosen that would have been a win-win.
"...we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a
timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API"
The way this reads, you can't even have a WordPress blog that puts ads
near a Twitter stream. Please correct me if I'm misinterpreting this.
RIP Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets, Magpie, Pay4Tweet, StockTwits, MuckRack,
(No more ads Listorious), TwittAd (and the non-profits you've
supported), 140Proof, etc., etc.
-Mo
Duane Roelands
> near a Twitter stream. Please correct me if I'm misinterpreting this.
a Twitter feed on a page and there are ads -near- it. What is now
forbidden is the injection of ads into the stream itself.
Peter Denton
I build third party apps that are 100% about consuming, purposing, and displaying tweet streams. If different clients inevitably begin selling tweet injections, I really don't want to deal with those on my end.
The tweet stream should remain a pure data entity. Dick has already said apps can opt out of displaying tweets, but if other apps are injecting, I lose control of that, and it will wreck the integrity of my app. Trust is ensuring that tweets coming to me through streams, are, to the best of twitter's ability, not spam.
Mo
The strength of Twitter is that the user has control, not a
developer. If they want to post an offer on their page, or anything
else for that matter, for pay or just because they want to share one,
they should be allowed to. The Twitter infrastructure is a great
filter for weeding out posts, users, and apps that have poor
intentions.
You, as a developer, can always exclude tweets based on where the
tweet came from.
I also support Twitter's intent, but this was not the best way to get
it done.
On May 24, 10:24 am, Peter Denton <petermden...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I want to voice support of this decision.
>
> I build third party apps that are 100% about consuming, purposing, and
> displaying tweet streams. If different clients inevitably begin selling
> tweet injections, I really don't want to deal with those on my end.
> The tweet stream should remain a pure data entity. Dick has already said
> apps can opt out of displaying tweets, but if other apps are injecting, I
> lose control of that, and it will wreck the integrity of my app. Trust is
> ensuring that tweets coming to me through streams, are, to the best of
> twitter's ability, not spam.
>
> On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Duane Roelands
Lil Peck
not free (Such as, "Tickets to the 2011 National Finals Rodeo go on
sale tomorrow.") violates the TOS?
Liz
received funding and developed over the past year, with the full
knowledge of Twitter, and this just undercuts & destroys them.
I think people can understand the rationale (and the desire for
Twitter to eliminate competition) but this is a policy decision that
should have been made over a year ago. Twitter should have included
this in an earlier terms of service instead of giving an implicit
"okay" to services like Sponsored Tweets which has turned into a
successful company.
It also seems disingenuous that the blog post says that a "guiding
principle" of Twitter is that "We don't seek to control what users
tweet. And users own their own tweets." and allow adult-oriented
content and photos but for some reason, users can't Tweet ads. That
sounds like control of content to me.
Liz
Lil Peck
> And users own their own tweets." and allow adult-oriented
> content and photos but for some reason, users can't Tweet ads. That
> sounds like control of content to me.
>
Dewald Pretorius
You are 100% correct in summarizing the problem. Not only were those
businesses built with the full knowledge of Twitter, Twitter even had
specific rules governing sponsored tweets (had to be clearly marked as
sponsored, etc.).
I'm really baffled by this decision of Twitter, because I don't
understand how they expect to have integrity and trust with developers
while doing this type of stuff.
Right now we are all being pointed to Annotations as the holy grail of
new development. But how do we know that they won't yet again change a
rule in the future that will kill businesses that were built on top of
Annotations?
Harshad RJ
Harshad RJ
http://hrj.wikidot.com
Eric Woodward
At this point I am not why anyone that cares enough to be in this
group is surprised. It is clear that Twitter is going to take
*everything* for themselves. I don't understand why anyone would
continue to develop on Twitter's platform as anything more than a
hobby. First it was us (Twitter clients) and now it is the ad
platforms' turn. Next it will be somebody else.
Lots of us enjoy developing for its own sake, and that is what Twitter
is now: a feature you add to something else, or a hobby activity. Time
we all just faced up to it.
--ejw
Eric Woodward
Email: e...@nambu.com
PeterE
in-stream ads, are freaking out for no reason. Let's start with the in-
stream ad companies. If you built these applications and did not see
this coming you deserve this. Apps that used the Twitter API to serve
in-stream ads are directly competing with Twitter core business, or at
least the one they plan to use to monetize their product. Twitter has
every reason in the world to get these applications of the site and
out of the timelines.
Based on Dick Costello's post, it seems as if applications that do not
directly interfere with Twitter's core product will continue to
thrive.
"We believe there are opportunities to sell ads, build vertical
applications, provide breakthrough analytics, and more. Companies are
selling real-time display ads or other kinds of mobile ads around the
timelines on many Twitter clients, and we derive no explicit value
from those ads. That’s fine. We imagine there will be all sorts of
other third-party monetization engines that crop up in the vicinity of
the timeline."
Companies like StockTwits and Flixup are safe. Companies like ad.ly
and 140Proof are not. The low hanging fruit was in-stream advertising.
This made perfect sense because 1). it was easy to execute and scale
and 2). Twitter was not doing it. Founders of these apps were very
short-sighted if they thought they would be able to continue to play
in-stream at, what Costello is saying, was at the users and the
platforms expense. Developers need to innovate and figure out ways to
leverage the power of Twitter's data and monetize outside of
Twitter.com and outside of the timeline.
Ryan Sarver
So if Liz is paid by Reebok to tweet about how much she loves their new shoes, we are not going to be policing that any more than we were on Friday. This policy also does not prohibit services like Ad.ly that help facilitate those relationships or even help her post the ads to her timeline on her behalf.
It does prohibit an application from calling out to a service to find an ad to serve to Liz that will get inserted into the timeline she is viewing.
The language is somewhat nuanced but it sounds like we might need to make the policy more explicit as a number of people are misinterpreting it.
Let me know if you have more questions.
Ryan
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> I want to make sure this part is clear -- this policy change isn't meant to
> say that we are going to start policing if the content of something a user
> tweets is an ad or not. The policy change affects 3rd party services that
> were putting ads in the middle of a timeline.
>
> So if Liz is paid by Reebok to tweet about how much she loves their new
> shoes, we are not going to be policing that any more than we were on Friday.
> on her behalf.
>
>
> The language is somewhat nuanced but it sounds like we might need to make
> the policy more explicit as a number of people are misinterpreting it.
>
> Let me know if you have more questions.
>
> Ryan
the other similar post) as a comment to Mashable's extracts of today's
discussion here.
http://mashable.com/2010/05/24/twitter-third-party-ad-networks/
mycr...@lifewithindustry.com
Dewald Pretorius
I think this is at the level where Dick needs to post a clarification
on the Twitter blog.
Everyone in the media, and there are tons of articles everywhere, have
interpreted this policy change to mean the death of Ad.ly,
SponsoredTweets.com, etc.
The policy is very poorly worded because it is not clear on the exact
scope of the ban.
The way I understand it now is:
1) Publishing via the web interface or via the API, by the user or by
a third-party service authorized by the user, of paid or sponsored
tweets are allowed provided that the tweet text contains a clear and
unambiguous identification that it is a paid tweet. These paid tweets
form part of the normal tweet stream and are not affected or
prohibited by 2).
2) When reading tweets from the API (REST, Search or Streaming) and
displaying the tweets in any list, the insertion of any additional
paid or unpaid advertising or promotional content in between the
tweets are not allowed, when such insertion can reasonably interpreted
as being part of the tweets that are displayed in the list.
3) Advertising around displayed tweets are allowed, but revenue from
such advertising must be shared with Twitter.
Is that reasonably accurate?
On May 25, 2:28 am, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
> I want to make sure this part is clear -- this policy change isn't meant to
> say that we are going to start policing if the content of something a user
> tweets is an ad or not. The policy change affects 3rd party services that
> were putting ads in the middle of a timeline.
>
> So if Liz is paid by Reebok to tweet about how much she loves their new
> shoes, we are not going to be policing that any more than we were on Friday.
> on her behalf.
>
Dossy Shiobara
... will no longer be allowed to do so?
http://i.imgur.com/pazT3.png
Is this another misinterpretation of the policy, too?
On 5/25/10 1:28 AM, Ryan Sarver wrote:
> It *does prohibit* an application from calling out to a service to find
> viewing.
>
> The language is somewhat nuanced but it sounds like we might need to make the policy more explicit as a number of people are misinterpreting it.
Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/
Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/
"He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)
Liz
> The language is somewhat nuanced but it sounds like we might need to make
> the policy more explicit as a number of people are misinterpreting it.
to do with how the information was conveyed and not the intelligence
of the readers.
Maybe Twitter should have engineers/developers write all blog posts
concerning parameters of what is allowed or banned with the Twitter
API.
Liz
nwjer...@yahoo.com
Nick Arnett
I stopped development on my Twitter app a year after realizing that the twitter API was not yet stable enough to allow an individual developer to create a stable product. I continue to follow the exchange between developers and Twitter as much for entertainment as to keep track. Twitter understands the eco-system that is evolving no better than the rest of us but it still wants to control and direct the evolution. Each bit of control it exerts trims off branches of evolution that do not support the main stem. By cutting off branches twitter is possibly denying the evolution of future success.
My experience and thoughts exactly, also.
Nick
Steel Sendras Group
Hey! How are you doing?
We read your post on “Twitter Development Talk” ‘Google Group’. You are right that, developing a twitter app individually is a very hard work. Or, in crux, it’s really impossible.
But, please don’t give up. If you still like to create the twitter app or want to help in the development work, then you have the option to join us!
We, Steel Sendras Group, is an organization providing various non-profit & for-profit services worldwide. And, recently, we want to develop a really cool, efficient, smart, reliable twitter app along with other softwares. So, you can come on board.
We are a community of people working together to make the web a better place.
If you think it’s a spam, then please feel free to contact us.
Cheers..
Steel Sendras Group
Follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/SteelSendras
No virus
found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 9.0.819 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2895 - Release Date: 05/25/10
11:56:00
mhansell
a possible change in the TOS. The press has wildly heralded it as the
end of all advertising on Twitter not coming from Promoted Tweets.
Even if this is not true the public perception certain impacts all of
our businesses....and if we are to develop with any level of trust
what's stated clearly and publicly is still going to be more important
than internal confirmations.
Look forward to hearing a clearer stance on this.
On May 24, 10:28 pm, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
> I want to make sure this part is clear -- this policy change isn't meant to
> say that we are going to start policing if the content of something a user
> tweets is an ad or not. The policy change affects 3rd party services that
> were putting ads in the middle of a timeline.
>
> So if Liz is paid by Reebok to tweet about how much she loves their new
> shoes, we are not going to be policing that any more than we were on Friday.
> on her behalf.
>
Mo
Thanks for writing the clarification. It sounds as if the intent of
the ban is to prevent anyone from emulating and distributing a stream
of Twitter data to Twitter mobile/web/desktop clients and inserting
ads into it. Tweets posted in individual accounts by account owners
or by proxies/3rd parties on behalf of the account owners are still
allowed.
The blog post did not suggest that this was the case, nor did most of
the press about the subject (as mentioned earlier in this thread).
Your post clears this up a lot.
Apologies to Dick
On May 24, 10:28 pm, Ryan Sarver <rsar...@twitter.com> wrote:
> I want to make sure this part is clear -- this policy change isn't meant to
> say that we are going to start policing if the content of something a user
> tweets is an ad or not. The policy change affects 3rd party services that
> were putting ads in the middle of a timeline.
>
> So if Liz is paid by Reebok to tweet about how much she loves their new
> shoes, we are not going to be policing that any more than we were on Friday.
> This policy also *does not prohibit* services like Ad.ly that help
> facilitate those relationships or even help her post the ads to her timeline
> on her behalf.
>
> It *does prohibit* an application from calling out to a service to find an
Dean Collins
Honestly my opinion is that it's Twitters rights to change the rules as they go - it's their network and their right to do so, but it's also my right as an investor in application development to not invest any more time or money on Twitter until they bring in a management layer that has experience I building ecosystems and knows how to encourage sustainable development.
Can you imagine if salesforce pulled a stunt like this?
Cheers,
Dean
> -----Original Message-----
> From: twitter-deve...@googlegroups.com [mailto:twitter-development-
> ta...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Dewald Pretorius
> Sent: Monday, 24 May 2010 9:27 PM
> To: Twitter Development Talk
> Subject: [twitter-dev] Re: TWITTER BANS 3rd PARTY ADVERTISING
>
James Peter
At first I was happy that the service I work on was not banned by this
ToS change. Even though we use twitter data for monetisation, we don't
insert data into timelines.
However, when I look at the services that have now been banned, I
can't see any warning signs other than that they were competing with
Twitter for monetising their data. This is what my service does. Even
though it's not currently banned, doesn't it make sense to abandon
development now? The best I can hope for it that it *isn't* wildly
successful, so Twitter doesn't consider it competition...
Every time I read Twitter's explanation for the situation, it reads as
"we know our monetisation strategy can't compete with third parties in
the short term, so we're banning all competition". Hardly conducive to
fostering the best solutions, particularly when Twitter will always
have the upper hand with their "official" monetisation platform and
analytics for resonance, anyway. What's even worse is the the new ToS
is *still* completely ambiguous. Until I saw Peter's post here I had
no idea that the ban was only in the publishing end, not insertion.
Of course all this makes sense from Twitter's perspective, but for
third parties... that just leaves us on an ever changing playing field
with invisible goals. I could have lived with rules and rev share
additions, but completely banning competition... not so much.
Concerned.
James
PS what's the point of this paragraph from the blog post? "We
understand that for a few of these companies, the new Terms of Service
prohibit activities in which they’ve invested time and money. We will
continue to move as quickly as we can to deliver the Annotations
capability to the market so that developers everywhere can create
innovative new business solutions on the growing Twitter platform." a
slap in the face? We understand that we've wasted your time and money,
so here's the next thing for you to waste time and money on. No
guarantees, no apologies.
Taylor Singletary
We recently updated our Advertising FAQ to answer many of the
questions that you may have. http://bit.ly/twitter-ad-faq
Taylor
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 9:15 AM, Liz <nwjer...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I hope some answers are forthcoming, James. Twitter doesn't seem very
> talkative.
>
Dewald Pretorius
Read this part of that FAQ: "Paid Tweets injected into any timeline on
a service that leverages the Twitter API (other than Promoted Tweets).
This applies to any Twitter stream, whether user based, search based,
or other."
Do you realize how confusing that is?
1) Does it mean I can publish a paid tweet via the API? (I know I can,
but someone who just reads the FAQ won't be able to figure that out.)
2) Does it mean I can inject "tweets" into any displayed timeline, as
long as they are not "paid tweets"? If so, it means I can insert
entries that look exactly like tweets, except they did not come from
Twitter and they contain my affiliate link.
You guys really need to sit down and read all these things through the
eyes of people who are not privy to your internal discussions,
decisions, and understanding of the matter. And then write your TOS
and FAQs so that everyone can understand them.
On May 26, 1:20 pm, Taylor Singletary <taylorsinglet...@twitter.com>
wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> We recently updated our Advertising FAQ to answer many of the
> questions that you may have.http://bit.ly/twitter-ad-faq
Taylor Singletary
address you can send them to: twitt...@twitter.com
I unfortunately don't have answers for you beyond what's presented in
the FAQ and the Terms of Service.
Taylor
Liz
I think this language will just lead to advertising without proper
disclosure by the user (which was used in keeping with the FTC ruling
on this issue). Some celebs & bloggers will still accept money & Tweet
about products, just without indicating publicly that they've been
paid.
Also, you say "We don't seek to control what users Tweet" but that's
exactly what you are doing by preventing users from Tweeting
advertisement should they wish to. I know you can set whatever rules
you like regardless of how they affect people or developers but don't
make a ban on using Tweets for certain kinds of content and then say
that you're not trying to control the content. Clearly, that is what
you're doing. That's what a ban is, exerting your control over
content. In my opinion, you've picked the wrong target.
I'm also not sure how "paid Tweets" by individual users is any
different from commercial/organization accounts using Twitter to offer
discounts, specials, sales, etc. Why does the advertising ban apply to
individuals and not to companies?
Liz Pullen
Dean Collins
twitter page?
Seem suspect you don't want to be nailed down in a google cache on the
specifics?
Regards,
Dean Collins
Cognation Inc
de...@cognation.net
+1-212-203-4357 New York
+61-2-9016-5642 (Sydney in-dial).
+44-20-3129-6001 (London in-dial).
> -----Original Message-----
> From: twitter-deve...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:twitter-development-
Dewald Pretorius
Perhaps you should ask someone to add the http://bit.ly/twitter-ad-faq
link as a further reading reference into the "2. Advertising Around
Twitter Content" section of the API TOS.
Stuff is very fragmented at the moment, and you have to accidentally
discover pages on separate domains just to get the full picture.
The same goes for further reading on other sections of the API TOS as
well.
On May 26, 1:20 pm, Taylor Singletary <taylorsinglet...@twitter.com>
wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> We recently updated our Advertising FAQ to answer many of the
> questions that you may have.http://bit.ly/twitter-ad-faq
Taylor Singletary
information should be grouped together as much as possible.
Dean: The link to the support center FAQ on this topic is very clumsy
and long; there are still a number of email clients out there that
don't handle long links very well, besides the convenience of having a
single URL that I can memorize easily when pointing it out to folks.
For those concerned about URL shortening, you can access that FAQ at
http://support.twitter.com/groups/35-business/topics/127-frequently-asked-questions/articles/142161-advertisers#20100525
Taylor Singletary
Developer Advocate, Twitter
http://twitter.com/episod
Mo
I'm glad Twitter thought to do this, but it still doesn't explain as
clearly as Ryan's post here about what's acceptable and what's not.
Not Acceptable:
"Paid Tweets injected into any timeline on a service that leverages
the Twitter API (other than Promoted Tweets). This applies to any
Twitter stream, whether user based, search based, or other."
This makes it sound like Ryan was wrong, and actually confuses the
issue again.
From Ryan:
"This policy also *does not prohibit* services like Ad.ly that help
facilitate those relationships or even help her post the ads to her
timeline
on her behalf. "
These sound like they are conflicting. Is Ryan correct, or not?
What would also be helpful is a link to information on how the
Promoted Tweets rev share works.
On May 26, 9:20 am, Taylor Singletary <taylorsinglet...@twitter.com>
wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> We recently updated our Advertising FAQ to answer many of the
> questions that you may have.http://bit.ly/twitter-ad-faq
>
> Taylor
Dewald Pretorius
I think the word "injected" is causing the confusion. As I understand
it it means:
- I pull a list of tweets from the API into an array.
- Before displaying the list to the user, I "inject" entries that look
like tweets (but are actually entries I get paid to display) into that
array.
- Then I display the list to the user making it look as if everything
in the list came from Twitter.
As I said, that's how I understand it. But with that understanding, it
does not make sense why Dick was going on about the infrastructure
cost of Twitter, because this injection does not impact Twitter's
infrastructure at all. It all happens exclusively on the application's
server or the desktop or mobile device.
Anyway, hopefully at some point in time there will be an authoritative
and unambiguous explanation from Twitter.
Mo
Thanks for the clarification. What you're saying makes sense and is
in
line with what Ryan was saying. I hope you're right.