Is Twitter the Mafia?
Consider this quote Twitter business development executive Tony Wang gave to AllThingsD, in regards to the company’s new terms of service, which say the social network wants an un-specified cut of revenues from companies making money off Twitter content:
We’re saying if there’s this thing you’re doing, and you’re selling ads against it, and it’s really big, we want to participate in that.
So, doing well with the Twitter platform means they want a piece of the pie, which certainly sounds mafia-ish, but not unusual. A revenue split with companies monetizing Twitter content is not necessarily surprising, but the statement by Wang is vague and doesn’t set any specific terms to the company’s policy.
The terms of service changes come in the same week that the company also announced a ban on “in-stream advertising,” which will likely affect a number of companies.
Given all of the changes, we reached out to Twitter’s recently hired vp of communications, Sean Garrett. Right away, we received an out of office message from Garrett telling us he’d be out through May 27th, with “limited access to email.”
So, the company for one is muddy on messaging, and two, their head of PR is out of the office.
Is Garrett on vacation, we asked? Turns out he didn’t like that question, and responded only with, “Seriously, Joe?”
Of course, that didn’t answer our question, but we’re still curious as to why Twitter’s head of PR would be out of the office with “limited access to email” during a week in which major planned changes by the social network were announced.
