I just created today another Twitter account for a website, and when I was started following tweets, I noticed some pop-up windows on some accounts saying that their account wer suspended due to strange activity. At first, I was ignoring this pop-up but it made me curious. I really have not use Twitter for a long time, and wondered if my other Twitter accounts got suspended as well, but upon checking they weren’t.
So what’s the reason they got suspended? I want to know so I will avoid whatever strange activity these people are doing. I found an article that itemized the reasons below, I don’t want to link back to that article to avoid embarassing the guy who got suspended in Twitter. Anyway, some personnel from Twitter posted the reasons why an account could be suspended.
- following a large number of people in a short amount of time
- a small number of followers compared to number of people you’re following
- updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
- large number of people blocking the profile and writing in with spam complaints
I am glad Twitter has this sort of policy to discourage people on over-using Twitter for just link-building purposes, without taking consideration that this is a social media site, where people wants to communicate, to connect to people they know.
For me to know if I am guilty of any strange activity, I answered the following questions.
- Do I follow a large number of people in a short time? Well, I manage my Twitter accounts manually, and hitting the follow button every few seconds turns to be a boring activity in a while. And besides I really don’t care about following a lot of people since I don’t update much often, although I found out that reading their tweets amusing and informative at some times. What matters to me is, if I do have more followers than the number of people I am following.
- So, do I have more followers? People may follow me because they just pushed the follow button from someone else, but I do hope though that some of them follow me because they think my tweets are interesting or amusing. Tweeting is like posting blog articles, if your posts aren’t interesting people won’t appreciate it. Isn’t it more exciting if you see more people following you?
- What are my tweets composed of? My tweets are composed of both. I have links, and I have personal tweets. Though I have Twitter accounts for link building purposes, I really don’t just posts links there as if it is an extension of my blog’s RSS feed. It annoys me seeing my alias profile full with links, it degrades the credibility of the blog. Aside from sharing links, I usually write some quick thoughts of current issues, or whatever I feel like saying that time, even if the account is under an alias. It just adds human touch to the account, and appear to be more social than just sharing links.
- Are there people blocking me? No.
In short, all I have to keep in mind to keep my Twitter account active is just to make sure I tweet responsibly.
