Clicking Away Our Photo Freedom

When I signed up for Twitter, I, like many people out there, didn't even bother to skim the Terms of Service section before clicking I Agree (c'mon, why would I want to read 5 pages to start sending 140-character tweets?). But if you're one of the millions who upload photos to Twitter, you may have clicked away the rights to your pictures.

Although most of those Terms of Service sections are pretty generic legal lingo, the writers at Photofocus uncovered a sneaky little curveball Twitter threw in. I'll start by laying out what's actually in Twitter's Terms of Service:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

 Unfortunately, it goes a bit further:

You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.

If you're confused by all of that, I'll summarize it Twitter-style in 140 characters:

If you post a picture on Twitter, we can do what we want with it and sell it to whoever we want. You want a royalty check? Sorry Charlie...

Now I won't rake Twitter over the coals too much here, because in all fairness they did put it right there in black and white. But given the backlash, I wouldn't be too surprised if Twitter did go back and change their stance on photo posting.


However, anyone who posts pictures on Twitter needs to be aware of this and needs to accept the fact that those pictures could end up somewhere else without their permission. This is especially true for photography enthusiasts and professionals, because they lose all licensing rights to their photos once they're posted on Twitter.

More importantly, this is a wake up call that we do need to start paying attention to every Terms of Service agreement, because you may end up clicking away your freedom.

Say What? Teens Send 3,300 Texts Per Month

Like most other millennials, I spent my high school years covertly sending text messages under my desk, afraid to go an hour without any contact with my fellow text-addicts. I also remember being scolded by my parents on a regular basis for racking up 500 or so texts a month.

Boy, have things changed.

A recent study showed that the average teenager sends over 3,300 texts per month. It's an incredible number when you think about how that breaks down. That's over 100 texts a day, or about 6 texts per hour factoring in 6 hours of sleep. It's also twice as many texts as millenials (18-24 year olds) are sending these days.

Teenage texting technology has made some advances over the years, and teens nowadays would scoff at using the same chunky flip-phone I was using back in my English class (back then, War and Peace couldn't hold my attention nearly as well as drama over the homecoming dance could).

Not only are smartphones becoming the norm in high school hallways, they're being used with greater efficiency.Both of these factors support the rise of texting so far, and more importantly show that it's likely to continue its stellar growth.

Facebook Friday: One Small Misstep for Users, One Giant Leap Back for Company-kind

Staying true to their inability to be happy with their layout, Facebook is rolling out more changes, this time with plans to remove the profile tabs.

As a Facebook user, I don't really have strong feelings either way about this change. I don't think Facebook has gone more than a month without changing something on their site, and with each new feature or different placement I've been left with mixed feelings about its usefulness.

But as a social media professional, I'm worried about the impact of soon-to-be-tabless profiles. And if you work with Facebook at all from a corporate or brand standpoint, you should be worried too.

I understand that most Facebook users only have the basic tabs for their Facebook wall, photos and notes that can be accessed other ways. However, most companies utilize other options as well, with different contest pages or promotion-specific tabs. The reason why companies use the tabs is that they are easy to find and navigate, and removing those tabs eliminates their usefulness.

Ease-of-use is so critical when organizing any sort of online presence. Websites need to be intuitive and social media channels need to be intertwined and be easily navigable. Making a website or Facebook page hard to use is the quickest way to lose traffic, and I'm afraid that Facebook's decision to remove the profile tabs will limit what companies can do on the world's largest social network.

Video Post: The Gap Flap

Another week has come and gone since our last video post, and Gap has been the company making a splash the last several days...but not exactly for the right reasons.

The short version of the story is that Gap unveiled a new logo design that was ripped by the social media masses. Gap then decided to crowdsource new logo ideas via Facebook submissions, before ultimately scrapping both their new logo and any Facebook submissions and returning to their original logo.

The issue here isn't necessarily about ascetics or Gap's design savvy (or lack there of), it's about re-branding. Preparation is crucial, and it's especially important to have a plan in place in the event of a social media backlash.

To view the AdRants.com survey cited in the video, click here.

Are Long Posts Finally Acceptable?

For years, the rule of thumb for anything you post online had been "keep it short and sweet." Videos had to be less than 2 minutes, blog posts had to be a couple paragraphs maximum, even legitimate news organizations had been shaving down their online articles to keep pace with our short attention spans.

Here's the problem...I talk a lot, I admit it. And if I really get into a story, it tends to turn into something resembling a novel more than a blog post.

Normally, those long-winded blog posts would have me concerned that my readers might get bored and move on halfway through a story. But just like we saw a cultural shift from longer newspaper-style articles to short Twitter-esque posts, we are now seeing the pendulum swing a little more the other way with a renewed focus on lengthier stories.

One innovation we have to thank for this is the rise of bookmarking apps and websites like Instapaper and Evernote that allow people to easily bookmark stories to read later. The way they work is simple; you see an article you like but don't have time to read it (or are working and shouldn't read it) so you send the link to one of these services and you can read them from your computer or smartphone when you have the time.

I've been using both Instapaper and Evernote for a few weeks now and it's been great for me as a reader, but they are even more important to me as a writer, That's because they open the door for me and every other blogger out there to write more in-depth. The reality is that it's extremely difficult to analyze anything in two or three paragraphs, and this emerging trend of social bookmarking alleviates the pressure.

So there you have it, a long-winded post about how it's okay to write long-winded posts.