My Twitter Account Got Suspended: What Now?

So I woke up yesterday morning, responded to a few emails and then opened up my Seesmic desktop application that I use for my Twitter account management.  I quickly noticed that something didn’t look right.  I hadn’t gotten a Reply or a Direct Message (DM) in over 12 hours so I opened my Twitter Profile in a browser directly and I was stunned at what I saw:

“Sorry, the account you were headed to has been suspended due to strange activity.”

My Twitter account had been suspended?  Banned for “strange activity”?  How could that have happened?  I was stunned and totally indignant.  How could they ban ME?  Don’t they know who I am? (kidding)

What do I do now?

I considered myself a model Twitterer and was certainly not spamming with obnoxious marketing and advertising.  My Twitter dialogue was constructive, I had a good balance of personal updates (a few) and links out to valuable content, I wasn’t posting duplicate content or blasting out automated marketing messages, and my Twitter following to follower ratio was balanced.  I thought I was doing everything right.

I wasn’t auto delivering my Tweets or doing anything that I would consider being aggressive or “spammy.”  What I was doing, however, was using one of those Twitter tools, called Hummingbird to help manage my account, a desktop application from a company called Mesabi Labs.   I was well aware of the dangers of using an automated tool like this to manage a Twitter account but thought I had a pretty good handle on how to use it effectively without getting in trouble.  As it turns out, I was wrong.

My Twitter strategy is pretty simple.

• Try to build trust with my following by providing a constant steady flow of relevant sources of information and links.
• Engage my audience by responding to their Tweets and replies and by following those people who follow me.
• Try to follow 20-30 targeted accounts a day (manually) that match up well with my interests.

Hummingbird has a feature that automates following and unfollowing from your account so you don’t have to do it manually.  For the most part, I had been using Hummingbird primarily to unfollow accounts that had not reciprocated and followed me back after a few days.  Hummingbird’s instruction documentation indicated that the software worked in the background and would stop following people automatically when “you’ve hit your following limit for the day.”

Now, Twitter has been ratcheting down the number of followers that any one user can follow in a single day for some time now.  Twitter has indicated that most people can only effectively manage and engage a smaller following and has instituted a policy that will limit the number of people that you can follow based on your follow to follower ratio.  You can only follow more than 2000 people when you have at least an equal number of followers.  After that initial 2000 follower count, Twitter throttles your following limits and will only allow you to follow roughly 10% more than your total follower count at any one time.  Twitter has account limits automatically built in to its system that won’t allow you to over follow, denying your follow requests when you have their predetermined limit.  When you overextend and go over those following limits, you raise flags with Twitter as an aggressive follower.   While you might not get immediately suspended, you’re certainly putting Twitter on alert about your account activity by doing so.

The day I was suspended, I had roughly 7100 followers and I was following about 7800 people.  What got me in trouble, I believe, was an auto unfollow of about 600 people that hadn’t reciprocated after a week.  Generally speaking, I will only unfollow chunks of 40-50 people at a time using Hummingbird.  In this instance, I started the auto unfollow and got distracted with some meaningless, totally unimportant task, ultimately letting the unfollow run uninhibited, which was a big, big mistake.  Unfortunately, Hummingbird does not have a throttle built in that will prevent you from unfollowing too many people all at one time.  Twitter clearly didn’t like that number of unfollows all at once.  I mistakenly believed that Hummingbird would restrict the total number of unfollows to a safe number, but the software is simply not designed to do that.  That’s what I get for making assumptions about one of these automated tools – a beat down by Twitter for aggressive following/unfollowing.  I screwed up – this wasn’t Hummingbirds fault – it was my own fault for not understanding the limits and dangers of these automated tools.

After getting the notice, I immediately contacted Twitter support about the suspension, quickly admitting to them what I thought had happened.  (For all the rest of you overly aggressive follow/unfollowers, here’s the support desk where you can inquire about suspensions: http://twitter.zendesk.com/requests/new)

Twitter support got back to me pretty quickly and asked me to resubmit my support ticket with more specific account activity details outlining what had happened, specifically about my use of Hummingbird.  Shortly after I resubmitted the support ticket, I got the following response:

“Your account was suspended for aggressive following and follower churn (repeatedly following and un-following large numbers of people.) This is a violation of the Terms of Service and Twitter Rules:  http://help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/18311

That we take very seriously. Accounts engaging in aggressive following and follower churn are typically suspended for a minimum of one week; at the end of that time, you may petition for reinstatement by either a) re-opening this ticket or b) filing a new ticket and referencing this one.”

I felt like such an idiot.  How could I let this happen?  I just got through preaching in a previous blog post about how to build trust, relevance and authority in your social media marketing and I get banned from Twitter for aggressive ‘follower churn’.  How could I be such a hypocrite?  How could I make such a rookie mistake?  Clearly, I’m an idiot and I’ll have to pay the price for my indiscretion.

In Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS), they’re very clear and very specific about aggressive follower churn:

“If you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn).”

Note the use of the words “particularly by automated means” in their TOS.  I believed that Hummingbird was legitimate software that could help me to manage and build a targeted following cleanly.  It still can, but my experience has demonstrated that, if you choose to use one of these automated tools, you’d better be VERY, VERY careful when doing so.  I made several false assumptions about the software and the safety of my account status that led to the suspension.  The wording in Twitter’s TOS makes it sound like the use of any type of automated tool for the use of following or unfollowing will be problematic and troublesome.

The bottom line is that I don’t believe that mass auto following or unfollowing is a good practice anyway.  The tool was attractive for me simply because it offered the benefit of automating some of the follow/unfollow tasks which can be a particularly cumbersome process when trying to build a following.  The whole point is that you shouldn’t have to use this type of automation to build a legitimate following.  As dreadful as it might sound, building a following the old-fashioned way (by manually clicking followers and those you want to unfollow) is really the only safe approach that you can take.

If you’re using an automated tool to follow or unfollow, you’re already on Twitter’s radar and it’s very easy for them to detect those who are automating these processes.  Even if you are staying within Twitter’s ever changing follow/following limits, automating the process is still very dangerous if you want to avoid trouble. While I’m not blaming this on Hummingbird, I believe that they could be more explicit and forthright with their users about these problem areas.  There is no mention of this particular problem in their online instruction set.  Twitter clearly does not like the use of these automated follow/unfollow tools and they pretty much told me so.  Communicating with one Twitter support rep about this, I asked if my account had been suspended specifically from the use of Hummingbird.   She replied:  “I would say that’s a safe bet.  ”

Many of you might be nodding in approval sarcastically while shouting “duh!”, while still others are probably muttering under their breath at how stupid I was.  Undoubtedly, I learned my lesson the hard way.  Again, I am taking ownership of this mistake … I was suspended because of MY activities.  While, I’ve even recommended a few of these automated tools to small business owners in the past, I’ve since changed my mind.  This experience has left me uncomfortable using or recommending any of these automated tools, Hummingbird especially.   Hopefully, the folks over at Mesabi Labs can rectify this problem and come up with a solution for future users, but unfortunately, I won’t be one of them.

Twitter’s follow/unfollow limits keep getting tighter and tighter.  As of today (9/17/09), you shouldn’t follow more than 200-250 people at any one time and don’t unfollow more than 250-300 at any one time.  If you insist on using one of these automated tools, keep your auto follows and unfollows down to bundles of 40-50 at a time at the most.  The reality is that any type of auto follow or auto unfollow is dangerous and Twitter clearly doesn’t like their use so it’s safer not to do it at all.

I will inquire about my account status in a week ‘s time, and hopefully, my Twitter account suspension beat down will be short-lived.  If not, I’ll be forced to start over from scratch.

Additional Resources on Twitter Account Suspensions:

• Twitter account suspension throws wrench in Wired find-the- reporter game (CNET)
• Lessons Learned from Temporary Twitter Account Suspension (WhyFacebook.com)

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