back to article Twitter tw*ts ad networks

Twitter has banned third-party ad networks from its micro-blogging service, less than six weeks after launching an ad platform of its own. Dick Costolo, Twitter's chief operating officer, announced the change on Monday with a blog post, saying the company would soon update its API terms of service to make things official. " …

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  1. davenewman
    Thumb Down

    spammers already advertise on Twitter

    If you search on a trending topic (currently Eurovision), you will find a lot of tweets with links to sex sites, with several topic keywords added on the end. The users do not even bother to follow anyone, they simply rely on popping up in searches.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      WTF?

      Eurovision? A "trending topic" (ugh!)?

      Bless the ADD afflicted tw@s. They'll be micro-blogging about this new "horseless carriage" thingy next.....

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Translation

    "Twitter is uniquely dependent on and responsible for the long-term health and value of the platform."

    becomes

    We still haven't made any real money or come up with a business plan for this toy.

  3. James Woods

    who cares

    Twitter never had a plan to make ads reasonably fit into the setup. I quit using twitter after one of the hacks they had and never looked back.

    I think El Reg pointed out how well the "confirmed accounts" work since Barack Obamas account was confirmed and then he was on a plane saying he didn't even know how to use it / never used it.

    Something tells me whatever they do, it'll shun users.

  4. 46Bit
    Badgers

    Get real

    From the article: 'The move is a mighty blow to services like Ad.ly and 140 Proof that were built to provide advertising on Twitter, but Costolo has urged third parties to find other ways of selling around the Twitter "timeline," its stream of 140-character mini-messages.

    "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," he says. "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."'

    The reality: We encourage devs to find new ways to make money using Twitter so we can monopolise their business if they're successful and so ruin your business.

    Don't get me wrong - I fully realise that Twitter is, as should be expected, doing this because the VCs have grown a brain and have seen people making money from Twitter whilst Twitter frankly isn't and so are pressing for it to actually develop a business model - but in reality that's the truth of what he's saying.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "a lasting advertising network that benefits users "

    Oxymoron? (as in "military intelligence", etc)?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tw@tter

    The only thing that has even remotely made me think of looking at Twitter is Stephen Fry.

    Even that wasn't enough.

  7. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    FAIL

    Tw@tter

    It's just a fad. So don't worry it'll all pass by soon enough.

    Just thought I'd share that with you all.

  8. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    FAIL

    "the company would soon update its API terms of service to make things official"

    Gotta love the Web culture of today.

    So Twitter defines a service and Terms Of Use, then, barely a month later changes and breaks everything but without forewarning or even changing its TOS, and nobody has anything to say ?

    What kind of management is that where you just go and make changes and, if it sticks, then you change your TOS ?

    Does anyone have the slightest notion of what a CONTRACT actually is ?

    A contract is an agreement between two parties that engage themselves to the clauses of the contract. Once signed, no clause can be changed without the agreement of BOTH parties.

    Frankly, I blame the EULA for implementing this kind of mindset. The EULA is supposed to be a contract, but it's materialized by a web page that can be changed by the company on a whim, without any semblance of acceptance by the customer, and no judge has found anything lacking in the process.

    Now we have companies that rip up the contract and make up a new one without consent from anyone else, making things official after the fact.

    Then again, this is Twitter we're talking about after all, not something important. But still, I would hardly be surprised if a class-action lawsuit came up. And the complainants would be, in my mind, entirely right.

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