By: RH
Twitter had some interesting stories come out yesterday that were both directly related and indirectly related to the micro blogging service.
The Verge reports on Twitter getting a patent for Twitter. From that article:
Although Twitter famously has a pending patent on the familiar
"pull-to-refresh" gesture, the company may have just acquired something
more valuable: a patent on the Twitter messaging service itself. The new patent issued today
with Twitter founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone listed as inventors,
and broadly describes a messaging service in which users follow each
other and sent messages don't have specific recipients, but are rather
sent and displayed to those followers by the system itself. That's
exactly how Twitter works, of course — it's definitely more of a
broadcasting system than a direct messaging service, and the patent
claims explicitly make reference to "broadcasting an update message"
several times.
FTC amends its DOT COM Disclosures to include mobile and social platforms. MSN covered the story with the following:
With all that in mind, the Federal Trade Commission just updated its guidelines for mobile and other online advertisers, on how to make those disclosures clear, conspicuous and deception-free.
The
challenge, it appears, involves Twitter and other, short-form messages
consumers get on social media. To illustrate that challenge, the FTC
created a fictional celebrity, "JuliStarz," and had her issue the
following fake Tweet:
"Shooting movie beach scene. Had to lose 30lbs in 6 wks. Thanks Fat-away Pills for making it easy. Bit.ly/f56."
The
FTC says that tweet wouldn't hold up to its standards for several
reasons. First of all, it doesn't disclose that JuliStarz is a paid
endorser for Fat-away. It also doesn't specify that the amount of weight
Ms. Juli supposedly lost isn't the standard result for the product.
This will mostly affect celebrities who endorse products and tweet about that product on Twitter. A follow up tweet is not considered to be ok as the audience may not put those two tweets together.
You can read the MSN article here
Lastly, Flippa who is an advertiser on Hybrid Domainer has been giving away 100 Flippa credits to one
random follower every Monday in March. The last Monday is next week. Just follow @flippa to be in the running.
