Twitter Suspensions Show Need For Social Redundancy

42 | Posted In Social Media by David

It might go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: You don’t actually own your social media profiles. So, don’t depend on them.

Last week, a couple of friends of mine got suspended on Twitter. Neither one of them did anything shady in the slightest. My guess is that Twitter will eventually reinstate their accounts and that this was a result of fitting some kind of broad pattern.

What it goes to show, though, is that your Twitter profile (or any other profile on a third-party site) could be whipped out from under you at pretty much any moment without any explanation.

Build Your Network With Security In Mind

The old saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” comes to mind yet again.

In this business, we always want to build out our reach on the Internet. What you don’t want to do, however, is place so much focus on building out one profile that you neglect the others.

Here are a couple of things I would definitely recommend:

  1. Always, ALWAYS host your blog on your own domain and on your own web hosting account. This way your presence can never be removed and any audience you build up remains your’s.
  2. Build out your social reach across the web. Don’t be overly focused on Twitter. Pay attention to Friendfeed, Youtube, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

When people build systems which are mission-critical, the idea of redundancy almost always comes into play. You want backup systems. You want a section to be able to fail without taking the whole thing down.

You could apply the same logic to your web network.

Don’t Make Waves With Twitter

I’ll make this point, too. Twitter is apparently going to be cracking down on people who aggressively build up their Twitter followings by following lots of people, waiting for auto-follows, then unfollowing the people who don’t return the follow. Tools like Hummingbird work on this principle.

I personally don’t think there is anything wrong with such tools. However, like any tool, it can be used in bad ways and in good ways. My recommendation is that you stay targeted with the people you follow, police who they are, and not get overly aggressive with how you use them. Twitter might allow 1,000 new follows per day, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it. :)

We have yet to see how Twitter will handle this issue, but they are aware of it and apparently not too happy about it. Realize, though, that Twitter is going through all the growing pains as email did, but MUCH faster. Twitter will need to make adjustments to deal with the increased spam and the gaming of the system. Just be aware of this and don’t do things that might lead to your account being suspended.

Let me ask you, however. Do you think Twitter should begin policing how you build up your follow list? Or do you think Twitter should let people do it as they want, as long as they don’t spam?

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  • http://www.makingmoneyonline.com/ Doug Dillard

    First off, I totally agree with not putting all your eggs in one basket, as I have lost a few large income streams over the years from companies I was associated with making simple policy changes.

    As far as Twitter, I think they should have some rules in place to at least define what they consider SPAM. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

  • http://www.makingmoneyonline.com Doug Dillard

    First off, I totally agree with not putting all your eggs in one basket, as I have lost a few large income streams over the years from companies I was associated with making simple policy changes.

    As far as Twitter, I think they should have some rules in place to at least define what they consider SPAM. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

  • http://erica.biz ericabiz

    I think Twitter should let people vote on who is a spammer and then actually act on it. I’ve reported several people as spammers because all they do is send out keyword-based links, but Twitter hasn’t killed them. Yet they kill for following/unfollowing. Following and unfollowing isn’t a nuisance unless the community says it is by VOTING those folks down (a “block” is the most effective vote, IMHO.)

    I think Twitter should dot his more like craigslist. You can report/block any person easily from their profile, but otherwise, they won’t police it. Once a person gets a certain # of votes vs. followers, they’re gone. This would make a lot more sense than the cat-and-mouse game they are playing now.

    -Erica

  • http://erica.biz/ Erica Douglass

    I think Twitter should let people vote on who is a spammer and then actually act on it. I’ve reported several people as spammers because all they do is send out keyword-based links, but Twitter hasn’t killed them. Yet they kill for following/unfollowing. Following and unfollowing isn’t a nuisance unless the community says it is by VOTING those folks down (a “block” is the most effective vote, IMHO.)

    I think Twitter should dot his more like craigslist. You can report/block any person easily from their profile, but otherwise, they won’t police it. Once a person gets a certain # of votes vs. followers, they’re gone. This would make a lot more sense than the cat-and-mouse game they are playing now.

    -Erica

  • Jake

    The first thing that comes to mind is John Chow when hearing that twitter will be cracking down on ppl who follow lots of ppl just to build their twitter list.

    John Chow even promoted a product similar to hummingbird.

    Bye Bye John. Not only did you get banned from google (black hatter), but you will be kicked off twitter too!

    Hilarious. Everyone wants to take the easy route and achieve immediate success. What a bunch of BS.

  • Jake

    The first thing that comes to mind is John Chow when hearing that twitter will be cracking down on ppl who follow lots of ppl just to build their twitter list.

    John Chow even promoted a product similar to hummingbird.

    Bye Bye John. Not only did you get banned from google (black hatter), but you will be kicked off twitter too!

    Hilarious. Everyone wants to take the easy route and achieve immediate success. What a bunch of BS.

  • http://www.pcmech.com/ David

    Jake, personally, I think attacking John is rather uncalled for. He’s done nothing wrong or shady, as far as I’m concerned.

  • http://www.pcmech.com David

    Jake, personally, I think attacking John is rather uncalled for. He’s done nothing wrong or shady, as far as I’m concerned.

  • http://rbravo.net/ Reinaldo Bravo

    Another alternative is to sign up for an opensource microblogging service. You may be aware that opensource applications are sometimes more practical than closed source. This is true in the case of firefox vs IE.

    Identi.ca is an opensource microblogging service gaining momentum. You can use third party applications such as gwibber to post once and both identi.ca and twitter accounts get updated.

    The only con is that identi.ca is not as popular as twitter, unfortunately celebrities don’t dig it. But it has so far been more reliable that twitter.

    No other social media is as weak as twitter. Posting into two accounts might seem redundant but while one has a fail whale too often, the other is mostly upright and as far as backups go, what better way to hold onto your stuff?

  • http://rbravo.net Reinaldo Bravo

    Another alternative is to sign up for an opensource microblogging service. You may be aware that opensource applications are sometimes more practical than closed source. This is true in the case of firefox vs IE.

    Identi.ca is an opensource microblogging service gaining momentum. You can use third party applications such as gwibber to post once and both identi.ca and twitter accounts get updated.

    The only con is that identi.ca is not as popular as twitter, unfortunately celebrities don’t dig it. But it has so far been more reliable that twitter.

    No other social media is as weak as twitter. Posting into two accounts might seem redundant but while one has a fail whale too often, the other is mostly upright and as far as backups go, what better way to hold onto your stuff?

  • http://www.Mollyinfolode.blogspot.com/ Molly

    The simplest way for Twitter to stop the spammers (robots or people trying to get lots of followers) is to stop posting an ID’s follower numbers. Take the incentive away to try to get the most followers and you remove the problem.
    Yes, there would still be programs/people to acquire more followers (MySpace was my learning experience on social network spam), however if follower counts weren’t seen, the motivation for the common Twitter user to use the programs would diminish. IMO most of the spammers are ‘real’ people who get caught up in the hype of ‘more followers make you an expert, giving you credibility’. Remove the follower counts and you would eliminate most of the programs’ gullible users.
    Your blog (and others’) alerting people to the fallacy of the premise the programs promote do more to control the problem than anything Twitter has done.
    Thanks, David!

  • http://www.Mollyinfolode.blogspot.com Molly

    The simplest way for Twitter to stop the spammers (robots or people trying to get lots of followers) is to stop posting an ID’s follower numbers. Take the incentive away to try to get the most followers and you remove the problem.
    Yes, there would still be programs/people to acquire more followers (MySpace was my learning experience on social network spam), however if follower counts weren’t seen, the motivation for the common Twitter user to use the programs would diminish. IMO most of the spammers are ‘real’ people who get caught up in the hype of ‘more followers make you an expert, giving you credibility’. Remove the follower counts and you would eliminate most of the programs’ gullible users.
    Your blog (and others’) alerting people to the fallacy of the premise the programs promote do more to control the problem than anything Twitter has done.
    Thanks, David!

  • Jake

    Dave,

    Obviously he has. Search John Chow or JohnChow.com in google and you will not find it. What does that tell you?

    Sry, just like to pick on the guys who pitch crap after crap. Some posts are informational i guess.

  • Jake

    Dave,

    Obviously he has. Search John Chow or JohnChow.com in google and you will not find it. What does that tell you?

    Sry, just like to pick on the guys who pitch crap after crap. Some posts are informational i guess.

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    I’m not a fan of rules or regulations. My view is to let people do what they want on Twitter – we each have the best self regulatory system possible……the unfollow button.

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    I’m not a fan of rules or regulations. My view is to let people do what they want on Twitter – we each have the best self regulatory system possible……the unfollow button.

  • http://bitsltd.us/ Don Forrester

    Unfollowing isn’t enough. The problem with the folks who use following to go ‘hey! Notice me!’ is that it works. If it can get eyeballs looking at their pitch, then it did what it was supposed to. Even if I never follow them back to begin with, the fact is that I looked. Normally, they’d have to pay Google 5 cents a click for exposure like that.

    I for one am extremely fed up with the marketers and spammers who fill my inbox with ‘Person X is following you on Twitter!’ only to find out that there is no possible way that a meaningful dialog or relationship will come out of it, that I’m just being yelled at indiscriminantly and possibly it was not even a real person that bothered to spend the time to look at my profile and click the ‘follow’ button. I started using Twitter to talk to real people, be heard, and hear them in return; not to become a number. From what I gather, that’s what most people are using Twitter for. And further, that’s pretty close to the developer’s original intent for this tool. And that’s probably why Twitter is cracking down so hard on those folks that are the most prolific with playing the numbers instead of using Twitter for what it was meant for.

    John Chow may not have done anything ‘wrong’, but having guys like that kicked off doesn’t hurt my feelings a bit, because they annoy the living hell out of me every time I open my email.

    And for that matter, I tend to look askance at anyone with a follower count over 200 or so, simply because that means that even if I know them personally I still may have a hard time having meaningful dialog with them.

  • http://bitsltd.us Don Forrester

    Unfollowing isn’t enough. The problem with the folks who use following to go ‘hey! Notice me!’ is that it works. If it can get eyeballs looking at their pitch, then it did what it was supposed to. Even if I never follow them back to begin with, the fact is that I looked. Normally, they’d have to pay Google 5 cents a click for exposure like that.

    I for one am extremely fed up with the marketers and spammers who fill my inbox with ‘Person X is following you on Twitter!’ only to find out that there is no possible way that a meaningful dialog or relationship will come out of it, that I’m just being yelled at indiscriminantly and possibly it was not even a real person that bothered to spend the time to look at my profile and click the ‘follow’ button. I started using Twitter to talk to real people, be heard, and hear them in return; not to become a number. From what I gather, that’s what most people are using Twitter for. And further, that’s pretty close to the developer’s original intent for this tool. And that’s probably why Twitter is cracking down so hard on those folks that are the most prolific with playing the numbers instead of using Twitter for what it was meant for.

    John Chow may not have done anything ‘wrong’, but having guys like that kicked off doesn’t hurt my feelings a bit, because they annoy the living hell out of me every time I open my email.

    And for that matter, I tend to look askance at anyone with a follower count over 200 or so, simply because that means that even if I know them personally I still may have a hard time having meaningful dialog with them.

  • http://www.pcmech.com/ David

    My question would be this, then:
    Why does it matter if somebody follows you? Even if you think he’s a spammer, him following you simply means he sees your notices. You don’t have to follow them back. So, it seems as if the problem completely lies in the user’s control. If you want to control your followers as tightly as you would, say, Facebook, then you’ve got to go private with your account. Either way, it seems to me Twitter gives you the tools and it is up to you how you use them.

  • http://www.pcmech.com David

    My question would be this, then:
    Why does it matter if somebody follows you? Even if you think he’s a spammer, him following you simply means he sees your notices. You don’t have to follow them back. So, it seems as if the problem completely lies in the user’s control. If you want to control your followers as tightly as you would, say, Facebook, then you’ve got to go private with your account. Either way, it seems to me Twitter gives you the tools and it is up to you how you use them.

  • http://mjthompson.net/ Mark Thompson

    I would much rather that twitter targeted people who spam constantly and constantly post the same tweets everyday. Since many of these are the people who aggressively build up followers it would be a better way to control the membership

  • http://mjthompson.net Mark Thompson

    I would much rather that twitter targeted people who spam constantly and constantly post the same tweets everyday. Since many of these are the people who aggressively build up followers it would be a better way to control the membership

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    Don, I don’t know how you can look “askance” at anyone with more than 200 followers, given that at any moment in time, less than 10% of your followers are going to be online and looking at Twitter. That’s instant messaging, not mass communication, and that wasn’t what Twitter was designed to be.
    For what it’s worth, I get equally frustrated when I click the links that take me to some lame sales page, but all I do is click off again and I don’t then follow those people.
    As David says, we have the tools to make what we want of Twitter, and I for one hope people baying for rules and regulation aren’t heeded.

  • http://www.mikeslife.org Mike CJ

    Don, I don’t know how you can look “askance” at anyone with more than 200 followers, given that at any moment in time, less than 10% of your followers are going to be online and looking at Twitter. That’s instant messaging, not mass communication, and that wasn’t what Twitter was designed to be.
    For what it’s worth, I get equally frustrated when I click the links that take me to some lame sales page, but all I do is click off again and I don’t then follow those people.
    As David says, we have the tools to make what we want of Twitter, and I for one hope people baying for rules and regulation aren’t heeded.

  • http://GenerosityMarketing.com/ Bryan Bliss

    People should go further than just not following but also actually BLOCK the twitter spammers who seem more interested in spamming and “autopilot cash programs”
    the blocks do actually add up and accounts do get investigated for spam when they raise enough red flags through blocks.

    I’m a marketing consultant. I love good marketing but I disagree with the impulse to take the social out of social media.
    thanks and take care
    Bryan

  • http://GenerosityMarketing.com Bryan Bliss

    People should go further than just not following but also actually BLOCK the twitter spammers who seem more interested in spamming and “autopilot cash programs”
    the blocks do actually add up and accounts do get investigated for spam when they raise enough red flags through blocks.

    I’m a marketing consultant. I love good marketing but I disagree with the impulse to take the social out of social media.
    thanks and take care
    Bryan

  • http://bitsltd.us/ Don Forrester

    “Why does it matter if somebody follows you?” You mean, if a spammer follows me? or 2? Or 10 a day?

    Because it denies me a useful tool: email alerts. If someone follows me, I get an alert, I check them out, and if they’re interesting people I say hello. Start a dialog. Yay Twitter! If, however, 70% and climbing of those ‘follower’ alerts lead me to spam pages or uber-marketers with 10k+ following/followers list, then my time and attention to my Twitter inbox has now gone from being a good thing to being a bad decision on my part.

    ‘protecting’ my account is declaring defeat. I.e., if I prevent people I don’t know from following me or seeing my updates, then I may as well go back to IM. If my random comments about Adobe, for example, were hidden, then I wouldn’t get their attention. I have 2 accounts; my own, and I also recently began to manage the online marketing for a product – look hard enough and you’ll find which one, that’s not the point here – and I use twitter to hear about product recommendations from our customers, as well as complaints and just fun wierdness I see all the time. If your advice to all those average, non-marketer people is to lock their accounts, then I would never see their posts and everyone would lose.

    On the other hand, if I don’t lock my account, your advice seems to be to just grin and bear the mounting assault on my follow alerts (99% of whom unfollow when I don’t follow them, which also seems a perversion of the system. You don’t follow someone to get their attention, you follow them because they have yours!) Well, fine for you. But I for one cheer Twitter taking out the worst of the folks I consider abusive.

  • http://bitsltd.us Don Forrester

    “Why does it matter if somebody follows you?” You mean, if a spammer follows me? or 2? Or 10 a day?

    Because it denies me a useful tool: email alerts. If someone follows me, I get an alert, I check them out, and if they’re interesting people I say hello. Start a dialog. Yay Twitter! If, however, 70% and climbing of those ‘follower’ alerts lead me to spam pages or uber-marketers with 10k+ following/followers list, then my time and attention to my Twitter inbox has now gone from being a good thing to being a bad decision on my part.

    ‘protecting’ my account is declaring defeat. I.e., if I prevent people I don’t know from following me or seeing my updates, then I may as well go back to IM. If my random comments about Adobe, for example, were hidden, then I wouldn’t get their attention. I have 2 accounts; my own, and I also recently began to manage the online marketing for a product – look hard enough and you’ll find which one, that’s not the point here – and I use twitter to hear about product recommendations from our customers, as well as complaints and just fun wierdness I see all the time. If your advice to all those average, non-marketer people is to lock their accounts, then I would never see their posts and everyone would lose.

    On the other hand, if I don’t lock my account, your advice seems to be to just grin and bear the mounting assault on my follow alerts (99% of whom unfollow when I don’t follow them, which also seems a perversion of the system. You don’t follow someone to get their attention, you follow them because they have yours!) Well, fine for you. But I for one cheer Twitter taking out the worst of the folks I consider abusive.

  • http://www.billmcintosh.com/ Bill McIntosh

    I think the spam problem has more to do with the context of the messages people are posting to Twitter rather than how many people you follow. As far as I’m concerned… who cares how many people you follow and unfollow. It’s what you send out to your followers is what counts!

  • http://www.billmcintosh.com Bill McIntosh

    I think the spam problem has more to do with the context of the messages people are posting to Twitter rather than how many people you follow. As far as I’m concerned… who cares how many people you follow and unfollow. It’s what you send out to your followers is what counts!

  • http://revolutionarywirelessreadingdevice.com/ Noel

    It’s Twitter now and when that’s cleaned up and all the IM’s have been hyped onto the next big social site it all starts again. And the Internet band wagon rolls on and on.

  • http://revolutionarywirelessreadingdevice.com Noel

    It’s Twitter now and when that’s cleaned up and all the IM’s have been hyped onto the next big social site it all starts again. And the Internet band wagon rolls on and on.

  • http://www.newbodynewlife.info/salespage.info Christian

    I think that Twitter needs to crack down on the following everyone to get more followers. You can’t honestly keep up with that many people, and it defeats the entire purpose of Twitter.

    Cheers

  • http://www.newbodynewlife.info/salespage.info Christian

    I think that Twitter needs to crack down on the following everyone to get more followers. You can’t honestly keep up with that many people, and it defeats the entire purpose of Twitter.

    Cheers

  • http://monroescoop.com/ Steve Sherron

    I run a local community web site, It would be great if I could set parameters such as geographic limits on those who follow me. I don’t want a housewife on the other side of the country who sells homemade necklaces to follow me. We both waste our time.

    If Twitter were like eHarmony it would only match up people who had something in common. It would be great if you had to fill out a questionnaire to join Twitter.

    3 months ago, I was very high on Twitter. Now, I have cut back my usage by 90% and started unfollowing people. If I get it down to 25 people and we like each other that will be fine. Too many people think it’s the ultimate sales tool and those people will fail.

  • http://monroescoop.com Steve Sherron

    I run a local community web site, It would be great if I could set parameters such as geographic limits on those who follow me. I don’t want a housewife on the other side of the country who sells homemade necklaces to follow me. We both waste our time.

    If Twitter were like eHarmony it would only match up people who had something in common. It would be great if you had to fill out a questionnaire to join Twitter.

    3 months ago, I was very high on Twitter. Now, I have cut back my usage by 90% and started unfollowing people. If I get it down to 25 people and we like each other that will be fine. Too many people think it’s the ultimate sales tool and those people will fail.

  • http://www.bettafishguru.com/ Cathy

    Wouldn’t it be better if twitter targeted the right people? You know the ones… they spam practically daily!! It’s annoying enough and just knowing that all their after is to build as many followers as they can in at least amount of time can get you all fired up!!! Again, if twitter just targeted these people I think it’d be a great way of controlling the membership don’t you think?

  • http://www.bettafishguru.com Cathy

    Wouldn’t it be better if twitter targeted the right people? You know the ones… they spam practically daily!! It’s annoying enough and just knowing that all their after is to build as many followers as they can in at least amount of time can get you all fired up!!! Again, if twitter just targeted these people I think it’d be a great way of controlling the membership don’t you think?

  • http://connect2workathome.com/ Andy Loverock

    There are several things that I like about you Dave, but what stands out is the genuine nature that is conveyed by what you write. ‘value first and self promotion second’ This post is a good example and raises some very useful points. It’s sound advice to recommend building your network with security in mind but I also think people should be able to build their networks however they choose as long as they are not spamming.

  • http://connect2workathome.com Andy Loverock

    There are several things that I like about you Dave, but what stands out is the genuine nature that is conveyed by what you write. ‘value first and self promotion second’ This post is a good example and raises some very useful points. It’s sound advice to recommend building your network with security in mind but I also think people should be able to build their networks however they choose as long as they are not spamming.

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