Twitter To Demand Ad Cut From 3rd Party Service Providers

Twitter is finally getting serious about making money today with a demand that third party Twitter providers give them a cut of advertising revenues.

The new demand follows a change to the Twitter API announced earlier that has banned all third party ad providers from auto-posting to Twitter accounts (details here.)

According to the TOS changes, Twitter wants a cut of advertising sales “where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the advertising sale.” Notably though, what the cut is isn’t defined.

The new clause reads:

In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the advertising sale, we require you to compensate us (recoupable against any fees payable to Twitter for data licensing). For example, you may sell sponsorships or branding around gadgets or iframes that include Tweets and other customized visualizations of Twitter.

The move makes sense for Twitter, but does again highlight the odd nature of Twitter’s recent treatment of third party providers: on one hand praising them, and on the other killing them outright or slowly by a thousand cuts.

If you’ve hitched your business around the Twitter API, you’re either brave or crazy mad.