I registered a few accounts to use them for some product ideas that I have and they were all suspended the same day without any notification. I sent them an email stating that they are not spam and that I plan to use them for legitimate purposes and requested them to remove the suspension. It is a week and they are all still suspended. This whole thing is very fishy as the product ideas I have may be somewhat related to their future product plans. I wonder if this has anything to do with it. Or is it just overagressive filtering and slow/bad customer service? I suspect it is the later. I will let you know how this thing plays out.
If any of you have experienced similar problems with twitter please share your experiences with us.
BTW, these suspended accounts all have generic names so there is no issues with brand conflict with twitter or any other company.
On a related note, Techcrunch asks how much does a twitter suggested slot worth? Jason Calacanis offers $250,000 for a top 20 slot for 2 years. This suggested list should be relevant to the users else it will ruin the user experience and it will make a bad first impression. Twitter needs to be careful with this feature.
Mike Arrington has a post on the value of twitter traffic. The gist of it is that the followers you get by being on the suggested list will not have a good click through rate, so they are not really valuable to you. This basically supports what I said above that relevance is important just as in google search ads. If the suggested list is not relevant to the user it helps no one.
It’s not your imagination Raja. I’ve got only one (01) Twitter account. Then for health reasons (I was having a surgery, etc) I made the “mistake” of canceling it. Then two weeks ago I requested the account restoration. They’ve said: “it may take some time, possibly as long as 30 days.” It seems odd to me. Or, just like you’ve said: overagressive filtering and slow/bad customer service.
Comment by Augusto Cesar Costa — March 13, 2009 @ 8:20 am
Same deal here. Multiple accounts registered for future development, and all suspended. I don’t think they have seriously thought this issue through, although I hope they have. In the domain name space there is a well developed market place for domain names and these things now go to the highest bidder. Let’s face it - it is real estate. Organizations like Twitter and Facebook have generated large user bases and the traffic that goes along with that, so ‘real estate’ and market value and there are going to be some wicked fights over the names. This will make or break some businesses ultimately. It reminds me of when Google decides to tweak their search algorithm and overnight puts some poor guy running a small business … out of business.
Comment by Jock Rutherford — March 13, 2009 @ 1:56 pm
Augusto - I’m outraged for you - demand they refund your money!
Comment by Andrew — May 8, 2009 @ 11:54 am