advertising and other stuff. no, really.



Saturday, October 30, 2010

Twitter™ Thwarts Tweeting Twitterers.












“What are you in for?”

“I didn’t capitalize the “T” in Tweet.” 

“That’s badass.”

A simple post announcing a new logo that few would’ve cared about if it didn’t also include a link to their new guidelines. Less simple, those. The two new guidelines causing the biggest problem:

1) Please remember to capitalize the T in Twitter and Tweet!

2) Don’t use screenshots of other people’s profiles or Tweets without their permission.*

Good luck enforcing it.
They just moved ahead in the polls for soon to be most ridiculed brand. I’m not ready to pull a Prince and call them The 140-characters or Less Texting Service Known As, and granted, all brands have usage guidelines for their name or logo to some degree, but it’s almost always a matter for their advertising and marketing people to be aware of – not your community. The ones who helped promote and grow the service? Gotta Tweet them with a little more respect. Rethink this one Twitter. I ain’t mad at ya, but in the rush to get Tweet™ trademarked and into the history books, the good will of the community risks becoming collateral damage.

UPDATE: Techcrunch says Twitter has clarified some of the points. Individual screengrabs are allowed in a news context, and the “T” will not be enforced — yet.

*You’re allowed to grab yourself, apparently.

1 comment:

Howie said...

Once I stop laughing. So they going to send Automated DM's telling you to capitalize or else be suspended? Or have Josie the intern have to contact each of us individually by phone to go over the T&C's that were recently revised to include Clause G Section 2.13 covering the Capitalization regulation pursuant to Addendum 8 issued on Oct 28th, 2010 with a lawyer on with her just in case there is any questions?