If you’re a Twitter user you might have received an email from Twitter founder Biz Stone last week about a change to their Terms of Service (TOS).

It’s highly unusual for Twitter to email their users directly, so it definitely got my attention. Turns out they’ve made a major update to their TOS, with key changes to the way Twitter addresses:

• Advertising
• Ownership
• APIs
• Spam

The biggest change has to do with ownership. There’s been some controversy since the micro-blogging service launched about who actually owns the content of your tweets. A few power Twitter users have profited from the compilation of various tweets into published formats and there’s been some confusion as to their legal rights to do so.

Well it’s now been confirmed that YOU actually own the content of your tweets, while Twitter reserves the right to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute” them.

A summary of the major changes to the TOS can be found in Twitter’s official blog post about the subject.

Twitter are also welcoming feedback from users about the new TOS, via the “feedback” link on the Terms of Service page.

Spread the joy!