Chil’s Point of View….

My Twitter account was sending out spam last week. Mikey was one of the people who called me to alert me of spam-links which were being sent. I immediately changed my password, but it seemed to have continue. So I then immediately post a comment (a tweet) alerting people that my account was sending posts, and that they should not click on any links that suggest get-rich-quick links. I also immediately engaged, sent mail to customer service, by following the procedure outlined– following a spam account.

What happened next?
Twitter suspended my account. I started back and forth trying to figure out what was up, and they suggested that I have been sending spam. I started going back and forth with them, even letting them know about how I even followed their procedure when I thought the account was compromised – but it seemed to have been mute, and their feedback was they will do an investigation. My account was down for many days, and I was persistent, and email customer service who told me to be patient. My account was later restored.

… but, it got me thinking.
Twitter has been getting some amazing press, and many companies are using the service for their marketing activities. These companies have got tons of followers, and these followers are keeping an eye on company announcements. Now, if one of these companies had a compromised account like I did, I can image how frustrated they would be, and how it would affect their image. Followers who would try to get to the company tweets would get a message with words saying the said account name is SUSPENDED due breaking some Twitter rules; I can only imagine the PR mess the companies would be in. I wonder if there is a faster way to restore an account, or if there is a special tag that Twitter is using for verified corporate accounts. If not, perhaps business that rely on sending messages need to provide/update their wording on the service so that customers (followers) can have some expectations; perhaps the companies can also have some alternative so that they can still get a Twitter-style messages out to their customers while their account is still in the suspension phase.

My 2 cents.