Twitter, a few days ago decided to block any advertiser aliens from it. And with the release of their new terms of use, twitter plans to charge some sort of tax on start-ups and some publishers who make money with the Twitter API.
Twitter is logical that you want to monetize your tool (using the twitter API), so it has been necessary for this radical change in the policies (TOS), until now the Twitter API was freely allowed to make API calls with its content. We all know ‘Twitter is a success’, but now its time for the company to start fund raising towards profit. In twitters words:
It seems that the vague wording is deliberate, if you are not certain on how to proceed with this issue. Some things to keep in mind:
- Twitter only focus on sites and services they sell advertising outside Twitter. If your service does not generate profits, or do differently to advertising (for example, subscriptions, analytical packages, etc..) you do not have to worry.
- If you have to pay, there are two ways – Profit sharing or to use twitter’s “Promoted Tweets“
- Minimum payment details are not yet concluded.
So far nothing concrete is set; it is possible that even Twitter itself does not know how to proceed with this issue. But what is certain is the change in its policies which includes some ideas of charging developers and publishers.
