Twitter has been trying to better monetise their platform after going public around a year ago. They’ve previously introduced promoted ads into users timelines, but this latest effort could target more meaningful advertising towards users.
The new ‘feature’ is called App Graph and is helping Twitter to build a more personalised service. Rather than just bombing you with ads, which may or not be relevant to your interest, you could actually get meaningful data. While Twitter will have a list of apps on your phone, they won’t be able to extract data from those apps, but by the mere fact you have Angry Birds installed, Twitter may be able to work with Rovio to target advertising better.
If you’re still a little bit creeped out by this development, you’ll be pleased to know that this appears to only be working in the official Twitter app. Twitter has also advised that they will actually notify you when the monitoring feature becomes active. The feature is also not mandatory and you can opt out at any time by opening the Twitter Android app and following these steps :
- Tap the overflow icon
- Tap Settings.
- Tap the account you’d like to adjust.
- Under Other, you can adjust the setting to Tailor Twitter based on my apps.
While the immediate knee-jerk reaction is to turn off the function, it may actually be worth seeing exactly what this will do. Rather than being bombarded with irrelevant promotions, maybe we could see some meaningful data.
Do you use the official Twitter client or a third party app? Will you be turning this function off if you use the official Twitter client?
Settings -> Apps -> Twitter -> permissions -> disable “read accounts”
I use FalconPro.
Sutff like this is why I try to avoid installing whatever social network apps on my phone that I can. Sure, that means using the mobile websites, but it’s worth the tradeoff.
The only answer to what Twitter are launching is to tell them to ‘Go and get knotted’.
Think about it for a minute, would you let an advertising mob into your home to catalogue your possessions in your home for better junk mail? That is the degree of unwarranted invasion of privacy and directed garbage strewing that Twitter are proposing with this scam.