Photo Copyrights on Twitter

Hello Anton, I have a question: Have you ever looked into photo copyrights on Twitter? I cannot find clear rules, and everybody just uses Googled photos, but I'm not sure whether that's officially illegal and whether that can have consequences in the future? Thanks in advance!

Answer:

To be honest, it SHOULD be really big legal copyright issues with copy pasting pictures on Twitter. It's the owners who are responsible for what they tweet, just like anything else. Picture credits or buying pictures are always necessary normally Online on any kind of website -- Printed Magazines can never print a picture without paying for it. This is not what's happening on Twitter. On Twitter it doesn't seem like a big deal stealing pictures from artists, photographers and similar because no one really does it. 

So yes, there are a lot of big Twitter account holders on Twitter who can get sued and get into very big issues. However, since there are so many account holders, I am confident that over 10,000 accounts are stealing pictures without paying for them or mentioning it's source or even give a name as a credit, I think there will be a very small chance that YOU will get sued -- You will most likely have heard about someone getting sued or in other problems before you've get into them yourself.

Also, most websites who are "stealing" pictures, can get away with it by having "Terms and Conditions" on their website stating that they will remove every picture within 48 hours if the picture owner want it to happen. If you want to be safe, mention this on your BIO or at least on a website that is linked from your Twitter account.

However, most likely, if you get sued, you will have to get sued internationally since you most likely don't live in the same country as the photographer. This will easily give you will at least months to remove all your copyrighted content. Haha, so you can say, sad but true, it seems to be easy to get away with murder on Twitter. 

I have been in problems, but not a big issue so far. Last time was today, I got a mail about my Science Twitter account and he also posted a status update on his Facebook account.

Woops. However, he also mailed me this: 

Hello,

You used a picture of mine on twitter which is great, but you did not credit me as the photographer. This is not cool. You are not in trouble in any way, I would just like you to share another one of my star pictures with credit to make up for it:)

Please msg me so we can work this out. Thank you... Here is the picture.

Thanks,
Dave

Bad things happens all the time. Twitter should not be a website where you don't accept original content, however, always try to make your best to give credits to the photographer, and never use content from websites who charges for using their pictures. And make it easy to contact you if there would be any kind of issues. This person for example who wrote me about this issue, I will for example definitely give him credit in future!

Good luck mate.

The Twitter Tools to determine influence on Twitter

A lot of people comes to me asking how to determine the power/reach/influence of a Twitter account. I've been myself struggling a lot to investigate some Twitter accounts. There's a few favorite Twitter tools that I've been a dedicated user of in the last 12 months. Reasons are simple, these Twitter tools are amazing at what they do, in their own way.

Logotype of Klout

To begin with, klout.com - The Standard of Influence - is probably the only Twitter tool that you can use alone if you only want to use one single Twitter tool to find out how powerful and influencing a Twitter account is. The Klout will determine every single Twitter account with a Klout score of 1-100, where 100 is the perfect Klout score, meaning, the most influencing account. Why I love the Klout score is simply because, it doesn't only measure how many followers a Twitter account has, how much it grows, how many retweets you get, how many mentions and FAVs you get -- It measures who the followers is, who is the retweeter and who is mentioning you. If Bill Gates follows and retweets you, then you are much more influencing than if 10 random nobodys retweets and follows you. Klout is measuring how influencing your audience is and how influencing you are towards them. Amazing site!

Screenshot from www.twittercounter.com comparing @Know @GoogleFacts and @SciencePorn

The second Twitter tool that I really want to recommend about influence is Twitter Counter. That's an amazing way of looking through the follower growth in the last 3 months! I however pay for the premium version and can check every single Twitter account's history in the last 6 months. Why is this interesting? As the statistics nerd that I am, I love to investigate Twitter accounts. If a Twitter account is growing 50,000 followers in 10 day or in 100 days, that's an amazing difference in power, reach and influence (if the followers are all real of course). The faster someone gained followers, the most likely, the more powerful they are.

Also, Twitter counter is great for measuring what's been awesome days on Twitter and what's not. After looking through the statistics on Twitter, I've noticed that most Twitter accounts are growing more Twitter followers on Sundays than Tuesdays, and Thursdays are more likely a good growing day than Fridays. You can also see how many tweets you've posted and how much you grew different depending on how many post you posted, how many followers you will have in 100 days if it's growing like it's currently growing on average and much more.

Screenshot from www.statweestics.com

The third Twitter tool that I enjoy a lot is Statweestics. This is a Twitter tool to take a closer look of Twitter statistics. It's live and old history updates of the hottest hashtags, users, words and locations. Very interesting.

Screenshot from Topsy Analytics

The forth Twitter tool is Topsy, and it definitely deserves a place in the list. Topsy has two parts of the site that I love about it, the regular Topsy site, and the Topsy Analytics site. The picture above is from the analytics site, where you can count all the mentions to a Twitter account for every day. I mean, the more mentions a Twitter account gets, the more influencing it ought to be -- if they tweet as many tweets.

The other part of Topsy is that you can search for a Twitter username and you can find the most retweeted/replied tweets that a Twitter account has received. Meaning, here's a way to find out if celebrities and similar things have mentioned you!

Logotype of Status People

Another site that I also enjoy to use sometimes for some accounts that I feel are a little bit mystery, is Status People. Here's a way to easily check out how many fake, inactive and very active followers every account on Twitter has. Very useful if you doubt an account out there and easily want to find out if the followers are real or not. The only bad part about this is that it's only the last 10,000 followers! Still an amazing good tool though.