5 Things to Check When Reading a Terms of Service

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With TwitPic recently finding itself in hot water over a terms of service change that prevented its users from reselling photographs they had uploaded using the service (their TOS has since been changed to slightly less controversial terms), there’s been a great deal of interest lately the terms we agree to when registering new accounts at various site and the time bombs that could be buried in there.

The truth is that very few people take the time to as much as skim the TOS before clicking “accept” and are completely unaware of what is in the legally binding contract they just “signed”. This has the potential to create major headaches down the road when and if these services decide to exploit their rights to their fullest.

So, if you’re motivated to be a little more careful with the terms you agree to, here is a quick primer on five critical things you want to check when accepting a new TOS. While, obviously, this isn’t a complete list, these are probably the things you probably want to look for first in order to best understand what it is you’re signing and what it might mean moving forward. [Read more…]

Twitpic Adds Video To Twitter

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TwitpicReady to ditch 140 characters and start showing off your personal videos to your Twitter followers?

Twitpic today revealed their new video sharing option and it’s a must have feature for anyone looking to market themselves even better on Twitter.

The new feature will also help aid citizen journalists as they continue to beat big media to major events, allowing for “on-the-scene” footage to be uploaded and shared to their Twitter followers in near real-time.

Sure you could just upload your videos to youtube and then share them on Twitter, but that really takes a user away from their Twitter core and with this new method those followers can respond in the same 140 characters they are accustomed with. [Read more…]

TwitPic Pulls A Facebook, Bans Posterous

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Whether you love them or hate them, it looks as if Posterous has angered yet another company, albeit for the right reasons this time.

In their attempt to liberate the twitterverse from having their images permanently hosted upon TwitPic which they announced earlier today.

A picture is worth 1,000 words.  Or 3 tweets, 2 blog posts and 4 status updates.  Which is why it’s important to keep your photos in a place that truly belongs to you.

We’ve had numerous users ask us to help them find a new home for their photos, and today we are announcing new tools to help move your photos from TwitPic to Posterous.

With Posterous, not only can you customize the look and feel of your site, you can also manage all your comments in one place. (Official Posterous Blog)

Unlike Ning, Xanga, Vox and Tumblr who all for the most part publicly ignored Posterous’s public challenge, TwitPic fired back by blocking Posterous’s servers from importing any more images off of the once favored tweet picture site (at least it will be when news of this spreads). [Read more…]

Bit.ly and YFrog team up. What does this mean for Twitpic?

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bitlylogo2.pngURL Shortening service Bit.ly announced new partnerships with Google (Reader) and Typepad together with a new API yesterday.
Most interesting news though was the future integration of ‘upload-images-to-twitter’ service yfrog, the ImageShack service.

As for the upcoming features that we’re working on… we’re pleased to announce that one is them is a new way to use bit.ly. In partnership with yfrog, we’ll be rolling out a shortcut to let you upload and share photos from the bit.ly homepage. Bit.ly links will also be available for all yfrog images.

After Twitter’s decision to integrate bit.ly as standard URL sthortener and now the Google (Reader) collaboration it seems that bit.ly has won the ‘Battle of the URL Shorteners’ for good. The question to ask now is: where does this leave Twitpic, the first ‘image-to-Twitter’ service and still leader in the race.