I'm Nicole and I live in DC. I'm a writer, knitter, cat lady, social media lover, nonprofit worker, and beer and food enthusiast. Want to know a little more about me? 
For the past few weeks, I’ve been living on friend’s couches and sleeping on my grandmother’s floor. I definitely learned the hard way that you shouldn’t start a new job before you find an apartment!
I moved in a few weeks ago and, just this past weekend, finally brought my cats into my apartment. I feel terrible bringing them into an apartment after they’ve lived in a two-story house for awhile, but they’ve already found their favorite hiding spots and discovered the slow drip in the tub.
I think we’ll all like it here…
Filed under: The Internet | Tags: facebook, myspace, The Internet, twitter
A week or so back when Twitter announced their new Terms of Service, I was pretty amazed at how minimal their updates were yet how much attention it garnered.
No, it didn’t draw the same amount of attention as when people found out Facebook was willing to use your photos in advertisements to your friends just because you didn’t opt out of a privacy setting you didn’t even know existed. But it still did inspire this post from Social Media Today.
The title “Why you should be worried about Twitter’s New Terms of Service” is quite ridiculous to me. Why would someone need to be worried about a website’s terms of service that they’ve basically already agreed to? If you find out you don’t agree with them, you stop using the service or adapt what you publish on it. It’s that simple.
The author’s first point is how Twitter has the right to “adapt and modify” your tweets through various methods of publication. To be concerned over this is kind of ludicrous because your words are already published on all over the internet and anyone can do whatever they want with them and you’ll probably never find out. But if the service that you’re using wants to do this do people seriously go, “whoa, buddy! Back off!”
Also, I personally don’t think you can’t own tweets even though Twitter says you do. And I don’t believe they’re intellectual property. If that’s the case, then shouldn’t we receive royalties from anyone who RTs one of our tweets? Or does that qualify under Fair Use? And, really, how valuable are 140 characters?
Finally, why wouldn’t you think that Twitter (or anyone else for that matter) won’t republish your Tweets in a book, blog, or whatever? Journalists are now using them for story leads (God save us all) and not citing people as sources or calling them “experts” and paying them the same salaries or fees as pundits.
People are putting their stupid, vapid, unnecessary thoughts out on to the most heavily trafficked website on the planet and they expect privacy and protection? Give me a break!
The thing that concerns me (which the author doesn’t even address) is the advertising aspect of Twitter that they’re leaving open. I don’t EVER want advertisements on my Twitter account, nor would I want to pay for Twitter to not have advertisements either on my page. It’s bad enough that there are porn spammers all over the place using real pictures and attaching fake names to accounts. We don’t need advertisements on the sidebars either.
I don’t want Twitter turning into MySpace, FaceBook, or Pandora (the only service for which I’ll cough up 99¢ a month).
