Why I have left Twitpic, and why you should too.
May 10th
Well as you can probably tell from the image on the right, this is all to do with a matter of copyright. As a photographer copyright is very important to me, it’s how I make money from photographs and it’s what ensures thatI get credit for my work which brings in more work. It also ensures that I have control over the final look of an image, if it is to be associated with my name, so that I can protect my name or brand.
I saw a retweet of an update frorm @iA this afternoon which pointed me towards the terms of service of Twitpic stating that as of 4th of May they were claiming copyright license on all images uploaded to their service. Understandably annoyed at this, I followed the link and had a read, to find the following paragraph (emphasis mine):
You retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to Twitpic. However, by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in media Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your media from the Service provided that any sub-license by Twitpic to use, reproduce or distribute the Content prior to such termination may be perpetual and irrevocable.
What this means
That first bold bit there essentially says they can do whatever they like with the image, at no cost, including selling it or transferring their license to any and all third parties which they chose, including the ability to make derivatives works (which would cover removing any watermark you may happen to have placed on the image).
The second bold bit basically covers them for anyone they like to be able to use their images, you have no say in who can use or license the image.
The third emphasis says that even if you delete the image, if they already have a sublicense in place then there is nothing you can do about it, and that license will still stand.
Imagine these scenarios:
- You happen to be there when something major happens, they can sell your images to the news services.
- You upload images of a friend, they sell those images and they are used without yours or your friends permission to advertise something unsavoury or adult.
- Your image / likeness is used to promote a product or service you feel strongly against (a pregnant mother in anti-abortion ads, when she is pro-choice)
- Those “Meet singles in your area” adverts you see on the right of Facebook, how would your husband feel to see you in one of those?
- A photo you took of a product is used, and the trademark owner decides to sue for that use, you as copyright owner could potentially be dragged in to it.
- An image of yours is used in a negative way, and the stigma of that is associated with you name which could affect business if you are a photographer.
Those are just the uses I can think of off the top of my head, there are bound to be plenty more.
Reaction
I immediately deleted all of the images I had on Twitpic, thankfully none of which had been uploaded since the change of terms on the 4th, and removed Twitpic’s right to access my twitter account. I uploaded one final picture which simply said in huge letters “Bye Twitpic You Bunch Of Thieving Bastards” which I can categorically say I have no qualms about if they wish to sublicense or allow the use of by anyone, anywhere.
One of the main reasons I used Twitpic was because of it’s ubiquitous support in Twitter clients, and the fact I had been using it for so long (813 days according to the oldest picture I deleted), and that it is the only choice for picture service native within the Android version of Tweetdeck which I use.
What to use instead
Thankfully the wonderful @alittlebit recommend Posterous, which I have now signed up for and will be using in the future to post pictures on Twitter, probably as well as a few short video clips and suchlike.
Like Twitpic it automatically sends out the tweet for me (as well as also being able to automatically post to a myriad of other services), and there is a handy app for my Android phone which will upload them for me, so in usability terms I lose nothing, but gain the ability to also upload pics via email and to add extra content or information to the post / pic before it is published and obviously retain the copyright, as it should be.
And just in case you’re wondering what Posterous terms of service have to say on the same matter;
You shall retain all of your ownership rights in your submissions; however, by submitting material to Posterous you grant Posterous fully transferable rights to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, transmit, prepare derivative works of, display and produce the material in connection with Posterous and Posterous’s business, but solely in accordance with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.
The key difference there is that you are granting license only in so far as may be deemed appropriate for the promotion and advertising of the Posterous service (which is likely to cover them for screenshots in news magazines etc), and not that they can sub license the images for any other use.
Final thoughts
You think that Twitpic would have learned from the mistake that Facebook made when they attempted much the same thing last year, and then very quickly withdrew the clause from the terms of service after massive outcry from their userbase. You can bet that Twitpic have something in mind for this, you don’t add something like that to your terms of use without having a reason to do so, but I for one don’t intend to be around to find out what that is, and hopefully neither will you.
If you want to sign up with Posterous you can do so by clicking here
You can follow me on twitter by clicking here.
UPDATE: There is a follow up to this article here: http://www.shepy.co.uk/blog/2011/05/twitpic-why-i-wont-go-back-and-why-you-shouldnt-either-a-follow-up/
~Shepy
Creepy: Interesting bit of software.
Apr 12th
I’ve made posts previously about how people are routinely sharing location information, often without even realising they are doing it, and how dangerous this can be.
Well, someone decided to take that further, and has come out with some software called Creepy – which given a twitter username or flickr username will trawl through tweets and pics, collate them all together and then present a handy map with times and dates for where that person was / is. (See screenshot in this post)
Now, historic information like this might not be too much of an issue you might think, but what about if it has a massive cluster around two places? Most likely your home and work, a bit more concerning then ?
If you want to have a look, and see what info it shares about you, get yourself along to http://ilektrojohn.github.com/creepy/ and give it a try.
~Shepy
Mr Quib – Speedy and positive response
Dec 28th
So I awoke this morning to a mail from Mukesh Singh, the managing director of Mr Quib, in response to my post about Mr Quib spamming a local hashtag, which is as follows:
UPDATE: The email from Mukesh was previously quoted here in it’s entirety, however Mukesh contacted me and requested that I remove his email from the site, which I don’t quite understand. There was a positive response from several people that they were happy he had taken action to resolve the spamming, as the comments below (which auto retrieve from twitter) show. I have removed the email from this post as requested, but that again shows a lack of understanding of all things social from Mr Quib in my opinion as it’s already in the google cache. as is the way with blog posts.
I’m really glad to see that they have responded so promptly, and have taken action to stop the spamming. I found out last night after my blog post that apparently they use an outsourced company to handle the twitter account for them, and it is this company who have been doing the hourly spamming.
Now whilst I still stand by the premise that Mr Quib will have laid out criteria and requirements for how the account should be handled and ultimately the responsibility lays at their door, I can also appreciate that sometimes the minutia of how it should be ran can get lost along the way when not handling these things internally.
Regardless of what went wrong, I’m very pleased to see that they have re-thought their stance on twitter, and the hash tag, and ultimately that we who follow the #nefollowers tag wont be getting spammed every hour. I hope Mr Quib (and customers/partners) do well, and as Mukesh says I’m happy to put this whole thing behind me now, It’s all dealt with and done as far as I’m concerned.
~Shepy
Mr Quib – Sure fire way to damage your brand
Dec 27th
Screenshot of Mr Quib
Some companies really have not got the hang of this social media thing, and the etiquette that is expected necessary to carry it out successfully. The internet is no longer a one way medium where people read information from the big sites and output little themselves, most people now have a twitter account, a blog, a tumblr or any other number of ways of making themselves heard.
It’s because of this participation and feedback system that companies engaging in social media must take care to do it correctly, or else deal with the repercussions of going at it half cocked. One such example of this is the company Mr Quib, a deals and promotional company which deals with Newcastle at the moment, but looks set to expand to other cities.
In the North East of England we have a twitter hashtag which is #nefollowers, which is typically used to share information that tweeps think would be useful to other people in the region. Typically you can expect to find news information on here, weather reports, traiffic info, job vacancies etc – you know, the kind of thing that people living in the region would like to be kept informed of. Sure, there is the odd advert on there, and as long as it is kept to a minimum then no one seems to mind too much. Then you get people who take it too far…
Mr Quib – who is on twitter as @MrQuibNewcastle, has taken to spamming their deals on this hashtag ever hour, on a loop, without fail. This gets very annoying, especially considering that even if you block a person on twitter they will still appear in any search you may do on a hashtag (such as a search column in Tweetdeck). Twitter is a follow based system, if people want to find out about the latest deals then all they have to do is follow the account, there is no need to spam a hash tag every hour. Do it sporadically to attempt to attract new followers, but not constantly.
As far as I’m concerned, this abuse of a local hashtag is wholly unacceptable, at least if you’re spamming it every hour (once or twice a day, sure I wouldn’t mind so much) and is a sure fire way to guarantee I will have nothing to do with your company. If a company chooses to advertise using such invasive and spamming methods then I will personally never use their services and will actively recommend against them. I’ve even mailed the companies I’ve seen advertised on Mr Quib to let them know this.
I’d urge anyone getting into the social media advertising space to think carefully about what they are doing, what the likely reaction will be from the target audience, and what the potential damage to the brand could be if their advertising is handled badly.
(and yes, I realise I have tagged this post with #nefollowers, but more so that the people annoyed by this constant spamming can see the post and have their say, I’ll only be posting it once)
~Shepy
UPDATE: I got a response from Mr Quib, which is on it’s own post: Mr Quib – Speedy and positive response
Is Facebook gearing up to get smarter?
Nov 15th
I, like many people, have my Twitter and Facebook accounts synchronised through the use of the Twitter application for Facebook. Every tweet I make get’s automatically posted as my status on Facebook within a few seconds. Whilst this doesn’t suit everyone I find it works well for me as I check twitter far more often than I do Facebook (barring notification email driven visits).
This evening I posted a comment to Twitter about Tiger Bread, which someone quickly responded to on Facebook. As the notification popped up to tell me so, I clicked it and was taken to Facebook, where I saw the following:
The most interesting bit of which being that last line stating “See 1 more post from twitter”. This isn’t something I have noticed previously (though I may be late to the party, as I say I don’t check Facebook much), and it doesn’t actually seem to function at the moment. Clicking the link does nothing, despite trying this in 3 different browsers.
Whilst having no immediately visible purpose or servicing any real need, this could be an interesting addition to Facebook.
- If it is based on the text of the update, then it could be interesting to show how many retweets.
- If it is based on the URL (if any) in the tweet, then it could show how far the link has spread.
- Aggregating Twitter in like this means those people only using Twitter sparingly have even less reason to leave Facebook now.
It is entertaining to watch this cross pollination of the various social media platforms, and seeing them integrate and try to draw in the users of other platforms by making the transition easy and seamless like this. With the recent announcement that Gmail wont allow API connectivity for Facebook to suck out your contact list unless Facebook is willing to open up their data in return, and the impending launch of a Facebook email service (which imo will have many plus points, like for example being able to mark things as important or spam more reliably based on those people you talk to often from the data Facebook already has about you), things are about to heat up in the social and communications space. I personally am all for it, as competition such as this inevitably drives innovation and improvement.
Comments and suggestions welcome.
UPDATE: Seems there are a few changes underfoot at Facebook HQ. I’ve used the remove post tool a few times to get rid of a Facebook sync when I have made a typo on Twitter, but I’ve never noticed these new options before allowing you easier granular control about what can and cant post to your wall without having to delve into the account settings screens:
~Shepy
Stop telling people where you live!
Nov 10th
With things like Foursquare, and now Facebook Places, people are routinely sharing every moment where they are. Now don’t get me wrong, I use Foursquare and often check in when I’m out at the pub etc and find it a great way to meet up with friends, but when I see check-ins from people on foursquare or facebook places and the location is tagged as “Home” it quite honestly makes me cringe. The internet is full of some sick and twisted people at times, and though you might not have upset anyone so far, there is a fair chance that you might one day, and they just might decide to come and have a ‘gentle word’ at your conveniently tagged home location. As most people tend to also tweet / facebook status update when they go on holiday, you’ve then not only told people where you live, but now that you’re not in the house and it’s prime for burgling.
Likewise, it scares the bejesus out of me that some people leave geotagging enabled on their smart phone, then upload photos to any of a plethora of image hosting services or send them directly. Now this isn’t such a problem most of the time if you’re out and about, but what if you’re at home and sharing a photo of something so obviously at home, like say the meal you just cooked? (I’ve seen plenty of people putting pics of similar up), or even worse, some girl chatting to someone online does a ‘self shot‘ (NSFW Google Image Search) pic to some guy she is flirting with online and doesnt realise it has GPS data logged in the EXIF of the image telling that guy (who could potentially be a not-very-nice kind of bloke) just exactly where she is?
Sometimes technology makes life enriched, entertaining and wonderful, but sometimes it can make it down right dangerous and worrying. Unfortunately the latter seems to come about all to often through people not quite understanding the full ramifications of the technology, or the information it is sharing. Please, think carefully before you chose to enable geotagging / location data in any application or device, and think about who may be able to see that information (and what they may chose to do with it) before you next check in at a location.
~Shepy
TweepMe Data Extraction
Mar 17th
So i was intrigued after writing my last post about TweepMe just exactly what someone would be letting themselves in for if they did sign up to the service, what accounts they could expect to see updates from etc.
Well, curiosity got the better of me so I threw some code together to scrape their pages and cross reference that with the relevant twitter page for the user and wandered away while it did it’s job. When I returned it had spat out a file with just shy of 2,000 people (probably more signed up since then, that was just how many was showing at time of scrape). For each person listed on TweepMe I retrieved:
- Twitter account name
- Name
- Location
- Website
- Following Count
- Followers Count
- Update Count
- Bio
I’ve had a quick spy through this file, and as i suspected it is very heavy on the following:
Product / services accounts – radio stations etc – aka you’re going to be spammed.
Massive following – just wanted more followers, that simple.
SEO and “Social Media guru” etc.
~250 accounts with < 10 followers looking to beef their numbers.
And worryingly, the top 5 accounts alone are responsible for 128,000 tweets since their inception, thats some serious time line flooding!
Having a look for one of my interests, a quick scan for ‘photo’ turned up only 87 tweeps mentioning that in their data, not a high ratio at all for my liking.
If you want a spy through the data yourself, you can grab a copy here:
I’m keen to hear anything interesting that anyone might turn up, so please do comment if you find anything interesting about the data.
~Shepy
UPDATE: After a tweet from @AlohaArleen, who presumably has something to do with the site, I’d like to share a couple of tweets about this post, just to make sure there is no misunderstanding about this data:
AlohaArleen : @Shepy You can’t use data extraction on the TweepMe site. The pages do not show all the users! Not even an acculmanation! FAIL! #tweepme
Shepy: @AlohaArleen How is it a fail, i scraped what was available, i never said it’s exhaustive, infact i said it wasnt. Defensive much? #tweepme
Shepy: @AlohaArleen Those accounts are reg’d, and so the data does give an accurate display of some of the accounts expected to follow. #tweepme
Tweepme, actually, no dont!
Mar 17th
So there is a huge buzz going about at the moment regarding http://www.tweepme.com – and the premise is basically this:
You sign up on the page, using your twitter username and password. Your account auto follows every other TweepMe user over a period of time, as does theirs meaning that everyone ends up following everyone.
So basically, I only really see it being useful for people that actually care about the follow count and want to increase it, or people that want to try and spam out their stuff to a larger audience. Whilst I can understand and appreciate the latter, is blindly adding several thousand people to your timeline / updates really the best way to do that?
To get it kick started, they are offering “free lifetime memberships to the first 5,000 Tweeple who register.” so straight away you know this is going to turn into a paid for service later, which will bring its own problems.
For a start you’re going to have 5,000+ followers, think about how hectic your timeline gets now and how hard it can be to keep up and see what you want from certain people, that’s only going to get worse with huge numbers of followers. Most of those people who are following you will be people who care about high follow count, which often goes hand in hand with high post count, lets say 30 per day (which isn’t overly generous) and you’re already at 150,000 tweets a day from people you don’t know and potentially share no interests with. The people who are not there for a high user count are ones that want to reach a large audience, so you can be sure of a tweet or two a day from them about their services or site or whatever. And that’s just public feed…
If you are following them and likewise they are following you, be ready for the incoming spam DM. How long do you think it will take for spammers to realise they can *AUTOMATICALLY* get 5,000+ followers and be able to spam them? Not long at all, you can be sure of that!
Whilst I realise you can un-follow anyone who annoys you, or even the bulk of the auto adds, how quickly do you think you can go through and manually un-follow all the people it added and avoid those you want to keep / already had? The service doesn’t even offer the ability to auto delete them, instead making it out like a good thing that you keep the followers if you leave – “If at ANY point a member no longer wishes to participate, they can end their subscription and KEEP their followers!” – Yet no mention of the ability to remove entirely, and have the service un-follow all those that it followed.
And while I’m on about what isn’t mentioned on the site, how about these for glaring omissions:
- Privacy policy
- Spam policy
- Abuse policy
- Terms and conditions
You’re expected to put your twitter username and password in a site with none of these available, no mention of what else is done with your username and password etc. Certainly not for me.
Twitter is becoming bigger and bigger every day, and with all the current media attention that’s only going to escalate at a rate of knots, which means an influx of the ‘myspace users’ type of account. This is exactly the service they will gravitate towards, and therefore be followed by your account.
Personally I like to keep my timeline relatively clean, it consists of tweeple that I have a shared interest with, that tweet about things I like or perhaps even just share geography with. Whatever the reason, every person I’m following I’ve chosen to have in my feed because I’m interested in the things they have to say, and I would assume the same for those that follow me.
If this service was as opt-in as it claims to be, then it would simply send you a mail with the details of say 20 tweepme users a day, and you could select if you wanted to follow them or not, instead of just automatically adding them all, that would make it a much better service in my opinion.
If you want a good way to find people that are interested in the same things as you, then I would suggest you try the TweeterTags service I mentioned in my Top Ten Tools to Twitter post. There you can search for people that have tagged themselves as being interested in a certain topic, and if you tag yourself with all of the things that interest you then you will find that your follow count increases as others find you in the tags and follow you from there.
Likewise, if you want to find people who are geographically close to you (and can even sub filter by keyword) then take a look at NearbyTweets and take a look through those people who live nearby and see what they are tweeting about.
I find it interesting that the @tweepme account has been suspended, no doubt for triggering some limit on number of follows per day / per hour / whatever. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this happened to some of the users of the service as well. Remember, its your username and password being used, you give them authority to do whatever they wish with your account, and that includes adding so many people in such a short time as to get your account canned.
All comments and suggestions welcome in the comments below…
~Shepy
Top Ten Tools to Twitter
Mar 2nd
Twitter can be an extremely valuable and useful resource, and also very fun, but only if used to its full potential. If you are new to twitter, and only just starting to get to grips with the service then you might wonder what all the fuss is about, I know I did when I first signed up (in fact I held off signing up for so long for just that reason).
I think Twitter really comes in to its own though when you start using the various tools available to make Twitter work for you, in the way that you want it to. I had considered writing a bit of a post about what Twitter is and how it can be used but I think that is covered excellently by the page at Tweeternet so rather than go over that again, I have decided to collect together some of the tools that I use which make Twitter such a great service for me. Here is that list, in alphabetical order:
Dabr – http://www.dabr.co.uk
Described sometimes as “m.twitter.com on steroids” this little page is great for connecting with mobile devices such as phones or PDAs. It splits down your messages into the normal home feed, your replies and your direct messages, so it can make it easier to handle sources and method of reply etc. This is the homepage of the PDA I use for twittering when downstairs away from the computer.
Polldaddy – http://twitter.polldaddy.com/
One thing that Twitter is great for is asking questions, be that asking for help with something you need to know or are stuck with, or alternatively you might just want people’s opinion on something. If it’s the latter, then often a poll can be a great way to quickly and easily get those opinions from your followers, so something like Polldaddy makes that as quick and simple as possible.
Twe2 – http://www.twe2.com
Until recently Twitter used to offer the ability to receive SMS updates, but sadly this was ceased for most of Europe. Along came the nice people at Twe2 to provide this service again, still free of charge. Sign up to their service and you can get instant SMS updates to your phone when you get an @reply or direct message to your twitter account. SMS can be limited to XX per hour, and you can also limit the hours during which SMS will be sent so as not to disturb your sleep.
TweetDeck - http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
Keeping the Twitter page open or remembering to check it periodically can become annoying very quick, so I recommend that you download and install a local desktop client to use Twitter through. Personally I like the layout and features of TweetDeck, splitting the messages, @replies and direct messages up into their own columns, much like the previously mentioned Dabr. It also has the ability to monitor Twitscoop so you can see subjects and topics that are trending on Twitter, a great way of keeping on top of the news as it happens, often even before it hits the major news sites. Add in simple, or often even automatic, URL shortening to make best use of those precious 140 characters and this really is an excellent client. Available for Windows or Mac via the Adobe Air Platform. [And Linux, thanks to Chris in the comments for letting me know!]
TweeterTags – http://www.tweetertags.com
Finding like minded people on Twitter can take a while, and can often prove fruitless without trawling through friends-of-friends to find people with similar interest. At least, that is how it used to be until Tweetertags came along. This excellent service lets you tag yourself with the subjects and topics that interest you, such as ‘photography’ or perhaps ‘rock’ and have people find you via those tags. You can browse through the tags other people have assigned themselves, and when looking in any particular tag you are able to see a list of everyone who has tagged themselves, and go to their profile to follow them if you decide to. There is simply no better way to find likeminded tweeple than TweeterTags.
Tweetie – http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/
Not being an iPhone user I have no idea about which app is best to use for iPhone, so I had to turn to the good people of Twitter and see what they recommended. The overwhelming response was that Tweetie is by far and away the best, and most fully featured app for using Twitter from an iPhone. Not being a user of it I can’t say much more than that, but due to the device’s market share I couldn’t really write a post about Twitter apps without including at least one iPhone client.
TweetLater – http://www.tweetlater.com
When I first saw this service, I really couldn’t see much point in it, but the more and more I used Twitter the more I have come to love this service. The ability to send out tweets at a pre-scheduled time can be great for things such as birthday reminders, scheduled blog posts you want to tweet out, keep a constant stream of tweets going while you are away from the computer or perhaps to just space out a bunch of tweets you need to send in order to avoid flooding your followers timelines.
Twhirl – http://www.twhirl.org
Some people are limited by the amount of desktop real estate they can or will give over to twitter, in which case a client such as TweetDeck might just be too much for them. If you are looking for a smaller client that is still very useable and offers most of the features of TweetDeck, then you should consider taking a look at Twhirl, which offers a smaller interface much like that of an instant messaging client. Like TweetDeck this runs on Adobe Air, so is available for both Windows and Mac. [And Linux, thanks to Chris in the comments for letting me know!]
Twibble – http://www.twibble.de/twibble-mobile/
One of the great things about twitter is being able to connect to masses of people at any time, from anywhere. To make that work properly when you are out and about (and to get a Twitter fix when you are addicted!) you are going to need a client on your mobile phone. Twibble is an excellent client for this, working on any Java enabled mobile phone, and with integrated Twitpic you can upload those pics as they happen straight from your mobile.
TwitPic – http://www.twitpic.com
If you have a photo you want to share on Twitter, then by far the best and most popular way is to use the TwitPic service. Simply upload your picture, either via the computer or even direct from your mobile phone and they will even send out the tweet for you to announce it to your followers.
I’ve added the links to all of these tools to the navigation bar of this site so you don’t have to find this post if you come back later in search of them. This list is by no means exhaustive, and I would love to hear about any other Twitter tools you find useful via the comments at the bottom of the article.
~Shepy