Twitter Mass Suspends Accounts

Twitter Suspensions Are Global

UPDATE:  I spoke to the fine folks at Mashable, they did a good write up here.  Also, the official Twitter Status Blog has an update, blames the suspensions on “human error” and they are working to restore everything.

I reported last week that my Twitter account was suspended, but it appeared to be isolated to me and wasn’t wide sweeping.  Twitter was very quick to get me up and running, and their official explanation was:

At some point, a botnet tried to push out some of your updates as their own. This means that when we took out the botnet, you went with ‘em. You’re back, and you should be safe from now on.

Today more suspensions are sweeping through Twitter,and even though my account was suspended again it wasn’t just isolated to me.  In fact it was so rampant in the early afternoon that it started to trend as a hot topic.  The suspensions have hit small accounts and large alike, and don’t seem to have a preference for who you are or what you do.  Corporately I’m aware of both Blockbuster (@blockbuster) and a section of the L.A. Times (@latimestot) getting taken out, privately it ranged from myself to Kim Sherrell to ModelSupplies and everyone in between.

As of right now there is not an official explanation from Twitter, although several folks on the consumer side have mentioned a “spam cloud”.  I’ve never heard of such a thing so I can’t tell you what that means, but a lot of people are being affected.  I see some credible speculation that those who use an auto-follow service (which I do from time to time) have been most affected, but as of right now this is only speculation.

If your Twitter account is suspended and you’re not sure why, follow these steps:

• Fill out a support request.  You can do so on the official Twitter support page, you will be assigned a number.  Keep it, and be sure to check in to see how things are going.
• Make sure you have a backup account.  Much of my work depends on me being able to communicate via Twitter, so I have a backup account, @singley.  I recommend that you create a backup account too so that you can at least get your voice out there and talk to people if you need to.
• Pay attention to trends.  If you look at Twitscoop you can a pretty good idea that this is a broad reaching issue.  If this does nothing else, you know you’re not crazy and other people are affected by it too.
• Be patient.  I know, I know…it’s tough.  Believe me, I know.  Once you submit your support request, try to enjoy life and check back in the next day.
• Don’t create “bring back so and so” campaigns.  I’ve seen a lot of “bring back” campaigns fire up on Twitter today, and all that does is clog the channels of communication to the folks that are trying to help, and there just aren’t very many of them…not enough to sort the signal from the noise of massive amounts of retweets. I would tell you who those people are, but then they would be swarmed with even more noise, so I’ll do my part to be a good citizen and keep their names off here.
• Sign below! I want to get an idea of how many people are affected, OR sign on their behalf since they may not be on Twitter right now so can’t see this request.

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