Twitter explains Tweet trademark

Twitter has revealed that while it has applied to trademark the term Tweet, it is not going to take action against the apps and services that use the word in their names unless the project is damaging or confusing.

Thursday, 2 July 2009

A TechCrunch report earlier this week revealed that the microblogging site had applied to trademark Tweet in April this year and Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, says in a follow-up blog post that it had done so "because [Tweet] is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective".

He praises the usefulness of third party apps such as TweetDeck, TweetMeme, Tweetie, BackTweets and Tweetboard and says that Twitter actually encourages the use of the word Tweet.

"However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important," Stone says, adding that the site is more cautious when it comes to the use of Twitter's own name in third party projects.

As a result of this, Twitter will add more documentation, best practices and guidelines to those already available to help developers who use the site's open application programming interfaces, he states.

Recent figures from Nielsen Online indicated that Twitter is currently the fastest growing web brand in the world, with the site seeing growth of 1,448 per cent in the 12 months to May.

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