I've been a fan of on-line services for quite a while. There are many good ones, several offered by well-known, successful, and solidly backed corporations. Some are free; some charge a fee. The question you must be able to answer:
Is it worth it?
Just recently, I came across an offered service that just didn't add up. It also illustrated why you must actually READ those Terms of Service texts before checking that little "I agree" box underneath them. Caveat Emptor: some services will try to charge you twice, without delivering comparable added value.
One of the hottest social media sites, as of this posting, is twitter. In fact, if you are reading this blog, it's likely that you tweet. You may also be familiar with the hundreds -- if not thousands -- of applications written to work on and with twitter. So, imagine my excitement upon discovering that PayPal -- a tool that I use -- had developed some apps.
twitpay looked pretty good. Nevertheless, due diligence lead me to check into the Retweet Commerce Suite. Oh, my! So, let me get this straight...
Through your use of Retweet2Buy (RT2Buy™) eBay deserves to gross approximately 18% of your twitRevenue, simply for providing a clever way for you to use an existing PayPal account? They also claim the right to hold your funds for 30 to 60 days (while they make more money from your money), before they release it to you.
"The amounts due to you from sales of your content will be paid to you via your Twitpay account within 30 days after the end of each month once amounts due to you equal at least $10." (From the RT2Buy TOS).
Furthermore, they get to leverage your digital content, using or reusing it as they see fit. Thus, essentially negating the fact that you still "own" it.
"With respect to your content, you hereby grant Twitpay and its affiliates the worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, transferable right and license, including the right to sublicense, to (i) distribute, use, reproduce, modify, excerpt, adapt, prepare derivative works and compilations of, publicly perform and publicly display your content on the RT2Buy services or in connection with any syndication or other distribution arrangement thereof with third parties, in any media format or medium and through any media channels; (ii) host, cache, store, archive, index, crawl, create algorithms based on, modify or transcode your content to appropriate media formats, standards or mediums as part of the RT2Buy services; and (iii) use your content for and in connection with advertising, promotional or commercial purposes, including without limitation, the right to publicly display, perform, reproduce and distribute your content in any media format or medium and through any media channels." (From the RT2Buy TOS).
Nice try, eBay, but I think your next billion may have to come from other sources. I must admire your moxie -- just cannot agree with the approach. Let us hang our own money out to dry... where we can still get to it.
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