Comments on: Did Twitter Just Kill TweetMyJobs, TweetaJob, TwitterJobSearch, TwitJobSearch?

By: Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:26:05 +0000

Hi Steve,
Well done in getting us all here, and I’m glad to see a smart, nuanced write-up behind the decidedly more sensational headline
We provide a number of professional services for global co’s looking to use social media in their recruitment process. It’s our understanding, and all clarifications we’re getting from them, that these services are compliant with the, admittedly, somewhat opaque current terms of service.
We have been building our version of “job sense” which makes use of semantic tools that analyze “tweets” to serve relevant ads and expect to be working with Twitter and leading 3rd party Apps in deploying this service. This product will certainly be subject to rev share deals with Twitter which seems only fair.
Twitter has been extraordinarily generous in allowing us to sweep through the 55 million daily tweets trying to identify and index offers of employment, and build a product that has been used directly by more than 2 million job seekers in the year since it launched. They are also passionate about UX. If their terms of service change in the future, they’re a great partner, and we look forward to working with them to build great products, and it’s clear that great entrepreneurs like Gary and Carmen feel the same way.
Like you, we’re seeing that job offers are showing up in Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook activity streams well before they show up in job boards. It would be great to chat about how we could work together to enhance the specific job search experience for recent grads.
Bill.

By: Gary Zukowski, Chief Bottle Washer

Gary Zukowski, Chief Bottle Washer — Wed, 26 May 2010 03:38:21 +0000

Steven,
Thanks for the forum to discuss, and yes, this is definitely something we’re monitoring. My take on this is that the wording of their new terms doesn’t convey clearly their intent and is causing somewhat of a frenzy in the Twitterverse. There’s been a lot of chatter about this on the Twitter Developer email lists, for obvious reasons, about the vagueness of their new TOS. I think this email from Ryan Sarver from Twitter sums up their intent:
“I want to make sure this part is clear — this policy change isn’t meant to say that we are going to start policing if the content of something a user tweets is an ad or not. The policy change affects 3rd party services that were putting ads in the middle of a timeline. So if Liz is paid by Reebok to tweet about how much she loves their new shoes, we are not going to be policing that any more than we were on Friday. This policy also *does not prohibit* services like Ad.ly that help facilitate those relationships or even help her post the ads to her timeline on her behalf. It *does prohibit* an application from calling out to a service to find an ad to serve to Liz that will get inserted into the timeline she is viewing. The language is somewhat nuanced but it sounds like we might need to make the policy more explicit as a number of people are misinterpreting it.”
TweetMyJOBS does not “call out to a service” to find an ad for our followers. We are paid by our customers to tweet out jobs to opt-in jobseekers.
Twitter has been supportive of our efforts thus far, and we aren’t sending spam or inline ads, except to the extent that we have a link to more detail for the job (which will probably get replaced with Annotated Tweets). In addition, we’ve said before and have even told Twitter that we’re willing to pay for the service. They ARE paying for the infrastructure that 100,000 applications are using, so why wouldn’t they get some revenue for this? Just think, if every 3rd party app paid $1,000/year for access to the API, that would be $100Mil in revenue. In return, the application developers would get an SLA, which would appease any investors and get more innovation dollars pouring into the Twitterverse.

By: Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com

Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com — Tue, 25 May 2010 23:25:38 +0000

I sure hope that Twitter doesn’t kill services like Tweetajob provides to employers who want to effectively distribute their job postings through Twitter.

By: Carmen Hudson

Carmen Hudson — Tue, 25 May 2010 23:16:44 +0000

Hi Steve,
Twitter’s intent is to end services that compete with its own Promoted Tweets product (services such as ad.ly). Services like Ad.ly pay Twitter users to have access to their Twitter timeline. If the Twitter user agrees, the service inserts an ad into the user’s timeline and pays them a fee for the courtesy. The most famous example is Kim Kardashian’s $10,000 tweet for ad.ly (I don’t remember the product/service). I think it’s a good move by Twitter, because it will reduce advertising spam and improve the user experience.
In it’s purest sense, you could say that Tweetajob, and services like it, use our timelines to insert ads for others. But our transaction involves only two parties (the employer and Tweetajob). In the example above, the transaction involved three parties (ad.ly, the advertiser and Kim Kardashian) Eventually, however, Twitter may outlaw even 2-party transactions. Doubtful, but possible (yes – it’s a risk, and I live on the edge).
The core of our service, however, is providing backend technology to tweet intelligently. We think that job tweeting is only one leg of a successful Twitter recruiting strategy. Employers want to reach the 106 Million Twitter users, and jobseekers want to get jobs that match their location and interest. That’s where we’re putting our apples!
Cheers,
Carmen

By: Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com

Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:47:17 +0000

Carmen,
I’m sure that you’re in much closer touch with the folks at Twitter than am I. In fact, if you’re in touch with them at all then you’re in closer touch than am I as I am not in touch with them at all. That said, if your statements are based upon Twitter’s current rules and not inside information, then I’m not sure if your confidence will hold up.
Dick Costolo’s statement in the blog article was:
[A]side from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. We are updating our Terms of Service to articulate clearly what we mean by this statement, and we encourage you to read the updated API Terms of Service to be released shortly.
Why are we prohibiting these kinds of ads? First, third party ad networks are not necessarily looking to preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created. They may optimize for either market share or short-term revenue at the expense of the long-term health of the Twitter platform. For example, a third party ad network may seek to maximize ad impressions and click through rates even if it leads to a net decrease in Twitter use due to user dissatisfaction.
I think that there’s a very good argument to be made that your clients are injecting their paid tweets into your timeline and that your service leverages the Twitter API. I can see that your white label solution would likely not run afoul of the yet to be announced rules as the timeline would be the client’s and not yours, but if XYZ Corp pays Tweetajob to tweet out one of XYZ’s job postings, isn’t that exactly what Dick wrote about?

By: Carmen Hudson

Carmen Hudson — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:51:11 +0000

Hi Steve,
Interesting to see the comments surrounding this issue. Twitter’s announcement did not affect Tweetajob. Because we tweet jobs through streams that we manage, (vs. tweeting jobs through the timelines of other users, like advertising services such as ad.ly), we do not violate the API rules.
Most importantly, the core of our business is not merely tweeting jobs for a fee. Our technology helps companies manage Twitter distribution, so that jobseekers get tweets that match their location and preferences. (We sell a white label technology solution to companies and third parties.) In that sense, we actually help reduce Twitter traffic.
We continue to work closely with the Twitter API team to develop compliant and cool web applications!
Twitter job search and job posting is evolving — it’s definitely an interesting ride!