Advertising Age had an interesting article a couple of days ago in which smarter than most Simon Dumenco takes on Twitter’s new terms of service. We all recognize the big brotherness of the medium, or the exposure in exposing yourself through micro blogging and tweet for alls, but for whatever reason people have been mostly benign about the incredibly intrusive new TOS as defined, double-talked and redefined by Twitter founder Biz Stone.
Image by surfstyle via FlickrThere was a general hue and cry and threat to boycott Facebook earlier this year when they changed their TOS to include the fact that they basically owned your content, comments and images. So loud was the backlash that they eventually relented and changed it back. Yet everyone seems vaguely lulled into accepting Twitter’s ownership of what you say and what you do.
You shouldn’t be that calm – here’s why. While Facebook had some smarmy schemes for trying to use your images or to drive revenue through advertising, Twitter’s new TOS is a lot more subversive, if not dangerous to your privacy. The long range potential for you to get screwed out of your ideas or semi-private information should make you even more hesitant to post anything sensitive, timely or proprietary on Twitter- unless you’ve already staked a claim to it.
Crowdsourcing, or the notion of seeking wisdom from the masses is a concept that is at the epicenter of emerging ideas, technology and data mining. Twitter is likely uninterested in what you ate for breakfast, or the fact that you think Kanye West is an ass driven by the need for publicity. What interests them more are your ideas, concepts and thoughts on technology, pharma and politics, which are endlessly marketable and potentially monetized (apologies for marketing speak here). Did you really think the service was free or without a visible business plan because people are in the habit of investing tens of millions of dollars so that you can kill time at work?
I’m not suggesting that you stop using the service, but in addition to thinking twice before posting links to pictures of you gone wild, I would suggest that you think long and hard before revealing anything that could potentially sabotage your chances of generating income, while increasing the coffers and brain trust of companies like Twitter.
Rachel, who believes firmly in sharing- but never ever giving away the farm
Like what you’ve read? Need a marketing, pop culture column, fun speaker or snappy sound bite? write to me at rachelblogs@gmail.com
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