I was recently suspended and re-instated by twitter . I will not get into the why that twitter gave me for it . That would make this post very personal and take my blog off the niche . But there were a few things about that which I do want to discuss on this blog . The reason why I want to do that is to enlighten all of you a little and in the process get a good ranting / venting going so that I too feel good 
. So without much ado , let’s get right into it
It was a usual day , other than the fact that it was Friday the 13th . I woke up as usual and went about my morning and after doing what I neeed to , fired up tweetdeck . Tweetdeck first told me that the twitter API was unavaliable and then that my authentication was failing . I promptly re-ented my password and hit the same error . I looked at the browser tab where I have my @replies feed on always and noticed no changes to it , I looked at the top of the page and I was following no one and no one was following me and I was on no lists . Then I understood that I had been suspended and looked into my email . There was an email from twitter telling me that my account was suspended and why . It also told me that I would be suspended for a week unless I contested the suspension and they agree and hence revoked the suspension .
I promptly logged a ticket with twitter explaining why I want to contest the suspension and giving them an assurance that I would abide by the *rules* that twitter has for user accounts . After I raised a ticket and typed over and over that I have not and do not intend to break twitter rules , I was re-instated and curtly told that if the automated system flags me again , my account will be permanently removed from twitter .End of incident
But here is what I did not like about the whole thing :
- There are no clear numbers : Twitter will not tell you how many folks you can follow or unfollow in a day . All that they will tell you is that it is a number that varies fom user to user and that they have autmated processes that determine this and flag incidents. While this sounds prim and proper , the fact that there is a computer somewhere that knows how many people I can follow and how many I cannot but I don’t and they won’t tell me , that makes me feel totally pissed and let down . I really cannot fathom this behaviour coming from a company whose market value is directly proportional to the number of people on it and networking with it . They need to clean that act up and fast
- There is no support SLA or commitment : There is no stipulated time for support to get back to you and it is extremely ambigous . I know friends who were suspended for days and a few for weeks , in my case it was hours . Again this type of cold shoulder from a company whose sole asset is their user base is really baffling to say the least
- Restoration is not smooth : After my account was restored , I suddenly had 7000 DMs in my inbox and a lot of my friends tweeted me saying that I unfollowed them , I also lost atleast a hundred lists . If this is the result of a restore , then the suspend is muc bettter . I mean , I am not really excited about raising a ticket and wait for support given the lackadaisical approach taken to responses
- Following and Unfollowing : Aren’t these two the most basic things that I sign up ro do when I create an account on twitter ? These should be de-mystified and totally free if you ask me .If twitter wants that capped then they should , like facebook , be upfront about the numbers and enforce on everyone equally . The current scenario of user based numbers and not conveying them to the users themselves sucks totally and a company that gets humongous investments from people flaunting it’s people power should give more precedence to people . Or it may lead to a day when the users get miffed and leave . Considering the number of perplexing outages and the really unreliable platform stability that the users bear with , I think it would stand twitter in good stead to be a little more people oriented .
With that I rest my rant and hence this post .
Dang, I usually clean up the fake celebs (people who follow then unfollow) in a single sweep every other month. That my action could trigger a suspension is a bit unnerving.
If you are rich on twitter, so many problems as I understand here. I thought only rich people have problems now I understand rich tweeting people also have problems. lol. Wanted to talk to you so many things…shall find a way ha ha ha
This is not a spam message
My account got suspended based on the fact that I was spamming a treding topic which I proved I was not.
You can read the whole thing here:
http://thezargon.org/2009/07/the-ultimate-fail-whale/
Here’s what I can tell you for sure. They will never suspend you for following up to the 1000/day limit. I know coz I do it. They WILL suspend you if you BOTH follow and unfollow that many in a 24hr period.
They’ve also suspended my personal APP I use for my script/s, and that was because I stopped all following, waited a few days and then unfollowed 20,000 in a single day. I mean, heck, I even checked with DougW first and he said I was fine to do it, but I tripped some sort of signal either way and they’ve never given me my app back and won’t talk about it any more via support tickets. Mysterious indeed!