Twitter's New Terms of Service and Terms of Revenue

Twitter’s been open about moving toward actually bringing in revenue for the service. A quaint notion, I know, but realistic. What’s intriguing is to see how Twitter’s terms of service have just changed, as the company announced yesterday.

First, the length. The old TOS was about 736 words long. The new one — 2,686, or a 265 percent increase. Clearly the lawyers have gotten involved. The Flesch-Kincaid grade level score has gone from someone in the senior year of high school to a person who has gone through college.

Trying to directly compare the two documents is almost impossible because of how different they are. Although Twitter “highlighted” some areas in its blog post, here are a few points that jump out at me, at least from a business view:

• Twitter is explicitly saying that content can and will be shared with others that “partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.” Use of content can be made without any compensation to the people who created it. Given the ecosystem of add-on services that Twitter doesn’t make money from, you can understand the approach. But it also opens the door for the company to monetize content in a number of ways, including publishing collections of tweets on a subject or even analyzing content of tweets and making them available to companies that might wish to know what people are doing or saying.
• ” In addition, Twitter may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally and may not be able to provide you with prior notice.” Otherwise known as the Fail Whale Clause.
• Twitter notes that it has always kept the door open for advertisements, but the old TOS simply didn’t mention the term. Now it seems that the “Services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the Content or information on the Services, queries made through the Services, or other information.” Other information is certainly going to include profile data for behavioral targeting. In addition, “… you agree that Twitter and its third party providers and partners may place such advertising on the Services or in connection with the display of Content or information from the Services whether submitted by you or others.” If they’re going to include ads, I can see how this would be necessary. But should they go that route, it’s going to potentially upset the millions of users who have been accustomed to getting a free lunch.
• The section on privacy points to a separate privacy policy. Twitter gives itself the option to “use your contact information to market to you, and provide you with information about, our products and services, including but not limited to our Service.” Interestingly enough, I can’t find any language that would allow Twitter to share the information with third parties that aren’t directly performing functions or services for it. So advertising may be an option, but sharing or renting customer data, other than through being acquired or selling off the assets in case of bankruptcy, doesn’t seem to be.
• Twitter explicitly says that the service are available on an as-is basis. This is known as the Fail Whale II Clause.