This arcle is part of my “What I have learned…” series. I am learning about all aspects of affiliate marketing. If you can teach me more about this subject then leave a comment and I will mention your helpful tip in my blog. Top Commenters get a do-follow link as does anyone whose tip I use in my blog….thanks! Marie.
Yesterday I started a Twitter account for Christian Affiliate Marketing, @ChristianMrktng. My first tweet was about a background that I installed from Twitrounds. My second tweet was about a blog post that I had made.
After that I had 10 people follow me. I suspect they followed me because they subscribed to an automated program (such as Social Oomph) that follows people when they tweet certain terms.
Later that night I had written a new post and went to tweet about it and was told that my account was suspended for suspicous activity. Huh?
I thoroughly read through the terms of service. I could get suspended for spamming, trying to hijack someone’s name or other unscrupulous things, none of which I had done. So, I filled out a request to be reinstated. I was a little bit disappointed that an automated reply told me that I would hear back from Twitter within 30 days!
But, by the morning, I had the following reply…
Hello,
It looks like you got caught up in some sort of spam cloud (through no fault of your own). I’ve restored your account; please let me know if you encounter any issues in the future.
Thanks,
BFF
So, what is a spam cloud? Through research I have found that Twitter goes through extensive measures to fight against spam. If someone starts sending out a massive number of tweets or retweets to promote a certain product (quite often porn or illegal websites) then they will get suspended from Twitter.
However, it seems to be that Twitter has a hard time figuring out who started the spam and who was simply an innocent bystander. Most likely one of my new followers was the bad guy. And then, Twitter simply shut down anyone who was associated with him (or her).
Anyhow, I am glad to be back!
Do you have any experience to share with us about the Twitter Spam cloud? If so, leave a comment below.
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I just had my twitter account restored after being shut down for the last 2 days. I got the same exact response you did…which was quite funny because I thought it was a personal note from the twitter support person. haha.
I too was wondering what the heck a spam cloud was. Thanks for the insight.
Thanks for the info. I to received the same message after fearing someone had hacked my account!
My account was suspended last Monday, and just today I got the same sort of message you got, and my account back. Only I can’t trace it back to any tweet I made. Are you actually saying that if someone following you starts spamming, Twitter will suspend the accounts of anyone that person follows? Wow! I never really bothered blocking spammy followers, usually they just go away on their own after a while, but I guess now I’ll be cleaning out my followers but good. That’s ridiculous. Twitter obviously knows who sent out the spammy tweet, and as long as you didn’t retweet that tweet they should leave you alone. It’s as if the police did a raid on a telemarketing call center, found several kilos of coke in the desk drawer of one of the employees, and because that person was calling your number to try to sell you credit card insurance, the cops come and arrest you too.
Shawn, I don’t know if anyone knows for sure why Twitter does this. But, I think it’s something they reserve for the “serious” cases.
If everyone who had a spammy follower was shut down there would be no twitter!
I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on what type of spam causes twitter to start shutting down accounts.