The Twitter Bug That Will Disappear Your Account

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The Twitter Bug That Will Disappear Your Account

By Tac Anderson ⋅ June 29, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Filed Under Twitter

Yesterday, I disappeared. It was the strangest feeling. Slowly, little by little my friends couldn’t see me. If they didn’t look directly at me they could still kind of see me but eventually I faded out until they just couldn’t see me anymore. I was gone, just like that. It was a very helpless feeling.

No, I’m not talking about real life, I’m talking about Twitter. Yesterday my Twitter account disappeared. At first I thought maybe I had somehow gotten flagged as spam or something. More and more people couldn’t see my account if they went to @tacanderson, but I was still showing up in search and people could still see my tweets. But eventually even that stopped and by yesterday around 6:00 pm GMT, I ceased to exist.

I reached out to @Support, @Charles and sent an email to Twitter but I never heard anything. I was able to post a blog post yesterday before I completely disappeared and posted that to Twitter and got some responses from friends. @kegill flagged my situation for @SG which he eventually replied to.

@kegill thanks for raising this. It would seem that @tacanderson is suffering from a strange & very rare bug that disappears the account

June 29, 2011 11:30 am via Twitter for Mac ReplyRetweetFavorite

@SG

Sean Garrett

Apparently I was the victim of a strange and very rare bug that disappears your account. Lucky me. But I wonder how rare it was because late last night as I was starting to return it turns out that several other people were starting to disappear.

@CathrynHrudicka aka @CreativeSage and @bikespoke were also reporting having similar problems.

#Twitter - this is scary. Just tried to log into my @CathrynHrudicka acct. and got "page doesn't exist." ! Have you seen it anywhere today?

June 29, 2011 1:56 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@CreativeSage

Cathryn Hrudicka

@blogbrevity @CreativeSage @tacanderson @CathrynHrudicka You are not alone today! Me too.

June 29, 2011 2:01 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@bikespoke

John Kosic

While it’s very unsettling it seems that Twitter is getting things under control as all of our accounts seem to be alright today.

But it got me thinking. I’ve spent well over 5 years building up my Twitter presence and what if they weren’t able to restore my account? What if all that time and effort just went out the window? It’s got me thinking about how I manage my social media accounts. I’m not leaving Twitter but I think some things are going to have to change. I’m too reliant on Twitter for my social connections and I don’t like that.

About Tac

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.

Visit Tac Anderson's Website | Follow Tac Anderson on Twitter

http://caffeinekeyboard.com Caffeine Keyboard

Definitely something to think about! I was wondering if the social media backup services are worth it, i guess they are since we have no control over our account security. It would be a shame for all of your hard work over the years to have been lost. Glad we can see you now!
http://www.postlinearity.com gregorylent

Corporate culture at twitter is weird, still, all these years later. How many whoops, sorry, your account is not authorised, etc drop down messages there are, plus over-capacity .. And a built-in lie that when you go to /somebody and it is over-capacity you get the window that says the account doesn’t exist …

Twitter is too important globally now to be run by @twitter management.
http://www.postlinearity.com gregorylent

Corporate culture at twitter is weird, still, all these years later. How many whoops, sorry, your account is not authorised, etc drop down messages there are, plus over-capacity .. And a built-in lie that when you go to /somebody and it is over-capacity you get the window that says the account doesn’t exist …

Twitter is too important globally now to be run by @twitter management.
http://twitter.com/kegill Kathy E Gill

Single Point Of Failure.

I think about this more re Facebook than Twitter — and not just because they have more accounts. They have a helluva lot more zeros-and-ones (compare a photo with a 140 character tweet with meta-data). But I do think about it with Twitter. It’s as though we discovered email and then we all used the same SMTP server.

I don’t know the solution - or if there is one. I keep regular back ups of my tweets and follower list. But I know if this account went *poof* that wouldn’t help me very much.
http://twitter.com/beezknez Beez

this has happen to me constantly with absolutely No comment re twitter support about problem & it totally pisses me off especially that there is no communication acknowledgement to ones emails to support re why it happens etc or any assurance aaaargh rare bug indeed .. Im a rare bug and i dont have these powers …
http://twitter.com/beezknez Beez

this has happen to me constantly with absolutely No comment re twitter support about problem & it totally pisses me off especially that there is no communication acknowledgement to ones emails to support re why it happens etc or any assurance aaaargh rare bug indeed .. Im a rare bug and i dont have these powers …
http://twitter.com/coneymedia Ed Weintrob

I’ve noticed this with people I follow and who I know DO exist. The disappearances are always temporary; sometimes they bounce right back.
http://twitter.com/fleming77 Jane Fleming

Social media anthropologist. like that.
http://twitter.com/fleming77 Jane Fleming

Social media anthropologist. All those years ago, contemporary Margaret Mead readings compulsory.
http://larryprevost.com/ Larry Prevost

Oh, this looks ugly. I’ve had contacts who were booted from Facebook, knocked off of LinkedIn, and now disappeared on Twitter. You know, we treat these social media platforms almost like utilities, but they have something that traditional utilities don’t have-history. You get knocked off a typical utility and you can pick up where you left off when you find a substitute. However, if you get knocked off Twitter, or Facebook or LinkedIn, suddenly you need to recreate 5 years of community building. Unlike your account, this problem isn’t going to just disappear until someone designs one.

Glad you “re-appeared” and in one piece.

lp
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

That’[s a great point @larryprevost:disqus that’s part of what made the idea of losing my Twitter account so painful. Part of it was the community and part of it was the history.
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

Thanks @twitter-18373946:disqus :)
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

@twitter-83346631:disqus Twitter says its a “rare bug” but I am hearing from more and more people that it’s happening to them or people they know. The good news is that it always seems to be temporary. The bad news is that there’s no communication about it from Twitter.
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

@twitter-122271857:disqus I agree, I think that’s the worst part, that there’s no communication about any of this. you’re just left to wonder.
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

@twitter-3370001:disqus It’s a problem that I don’t think has a solution. People keep talking about a distributed social network that each user hosts on their own but we all know that just isn’t going to happen. I back up my content as well but how do you back up your network? I think the only solution is duplication of efforts. If I participate in communities across multiple networks like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+ and Posterous then the loss of one network is far less traumatic.
And thanks again for your help Kathy.
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

@gregorylent:disqus I agree that their communication is terrible and it only seems to be getting worse under @DickC. @Biz:twitter & @Ev:twitter seemed to do a better job than the current team.
http://www.newcommbiz.com tacanderson

Data backup is only part of the problem. I now think that distributing your own social network across multiple social networking sites is extremely important.
http://twitter.com/kegill Kathy E Gill

Tac, you’re right. But everyone isn’t on every network … and they’re all a little different, just like pizza shops or bars are the ‘same’ but ‘different.’ And you’re welcome - I’m glad Sean could help.