Off late we are seeing a new trend that mainstream media uses twitter to source stories and data . There are also media houses that have openly admitted that twitter gets you breaking news faster than them . So a layman asks , Will twitter replace mainstream news media ? Let us try and answer that question in this post .Will that really happen ? How has twitter changed the news game ?
Jun 30, 2010
15 Things that Twitter calls spam
Ever wondered what twitter considers spam ? Well here is a list to start with
- If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time;
- If you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn)
- If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile
- If you have a small number of followers compared to the amount of people you are following
- If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates
- If a large number of people are blocking you
- The number of spam complaints that have been filed against you
- If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account
- If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using hashtags
- If you post multiple unrelated updates to a trending or popular topic
- If you send large numbers of duplicate @replies
- If you send large numbers of unsolicited @replies in an attempt to spam a service or link
- If you repost other user's content without attribution.
- If you have attempted to "sell" followers, particularly through tactics considered aggressive following or follower churn.
- Using or promoting third-party sites that claim to get you more followers (such as follower trains, sites promising "more followers fast," or any other site that offers to automatically add followers to your account).
Is Twitter just a verbal gym ? I differ !
I asked many of my friends a few questions on twitter , my idea was to collate responses and make a blog post out of it . We all know that it is the new IT thing around and is the centre of many a new innovation . But my objective is to get the human angle on this . All said and done , finally the people who use it are the people who make it such a wonderful platform and a booming centre of focus now . Here are a few observations and before we get into that , let me state that I will not quote verbatim here , but condense my findings and try and extrapolate from them . So without much more ado , let us get right into it
What is Twitter to me ?
This question drew the most diverse set of answers , ranging from one end where it was a platform to connect with more friends and make meaningful company , to getting positive responses to social causes , a mix of individuals to target for marketing and finally a powerful podium for self expression where you speak less but speak as is .
These response tell you that people are not using twitter just for the sake of sounding off at a bunch of followers who will listen to whatever you say . Twitter now has evolved into a "place" where you meet and actually socialize with people . A far cry from just a source of breaking news that it was hitherto considered to be . Very frankly speaking , I see very few people tweeting about tying up their shoe laces and their doggy pooping . They actually have meaningful conversations and derive value from these .This is not however to be mistaken with IM , no conversation is 1-on-1 , other than DMs . So everyone is in the loop and listening and even adding to what is being said . In many ways , this strikes me as one of the purposes a university is supposed to serve . People talk and get responses and go back with solid info .
Is Twitter about popularity ?
No say most of my friends in India . This is a stark contrast with the other users many whom are blindly after popularity and numbers . For most of my Indian friends twitter is a virtual hangout where they hang out with buds and actually even fight off boredom and depression . The invention of #twugs on twitter has helped here . Folks exchange #twugs all the time to pep up and cheer up buddies . They have even virtual coffees and toffees . What a wonderful thing !
But some feel that with the popularity of the medium booming , people seeking popularity on twitter is on the rise . Some examples would be @aplusk and @oprah who actually tweet gibberish but have a mad bunch of millions following them .
The concluding thought there would be , that in India it is not a rat race for numbers yet ! I see that even celebrities like @gulpanag and @Shashitharoor are not tweeting junk , they actually have info to share and they do .
What has twitter changed for me ?
The most heartening response to that was that one of my friends got sponsors for the education of needy kids from twitter . I am happy to hear that , and I guess so are you ! I know of a friend who actually manned a helpdesk for the 26/11 queries . The Gay pride movement had a lot of solidarity coming from Indian Tweeps . So social causes are getting responses from tweeps and genuine ones at that .
A group of my younger friends told me that they truncate thinking to 140 chars now ! That makes them precise and less verbose . They also dig in and share useful technical tips that makes life easier . Virtually everyone i asked has responded with positive changes coming out of twitter . There was an independent film that got promoted on twitter . There was a bunch of responsible tweeps helping out commuters when Mumbai Rains happened . The effect of twitter on Iran is well known .
All in all , everyone has been touched and touched positively by twitter .
Who do I follow/unfollow in twitter ?
Here there was overwhelming consensus . A tweep is followed based on common interests , recos from friends , a valid DP and a well written bio . Each tweep has a tweet pattern and the folks watch this before deciding on following him/her . Annoying people do not get attention and engagers get a lion's share .
On the unfollow front , here are the rules , respond to tweets or be unfollowed . DO NOT SEND Auto DMs . Do not tweet about Tons of Followers or give "Gifts" of e-books to people . Also do not come across as a brother or sister of Narcissus , then you are finished . And last but not the least if someone takes all this effort and follows you , you better follow them back or get unfollowed !
Conclusion :
Twitter is by no means a verbal gym , it is place to find , mix with and talk to sensible people , gather useful info , support meaningful causes and get help on any issues . The current crop of tweeps are not killing time here and they are serious about tweets . Tweets are in a way a reflection of you and a lot of effort goes into tweets . Tweet anyone the way you wan to be tweeted and you will be ok . Celebrity or not , credibility and responsiveness counts and rules . So Hereby I conclude that Twitter is the Adda / Hangout of the current times and sincerely pray that twitter support minimizes outages and increases the scalability of this wonderful platform that is now touching every walk of life .
Twitter Apps : whom to trust ?
My intention is not meant to alarm the reader into unnecessary panic , but do be aware that when you use twitter to authorize any app for to do something for you , you may actually be inadvertently also allowing a marketer sitting somewhere to tweet for you . Don't believe it ? Look at the response from one of my friends on twitter ( my id was @sakthidharan back then)
I was amazed when I saw that in my @replies , I had no idea what tweet He was talking about ! I did not post anything about 300 followers a day at all ! And I am sure that it is one of the apps that I had authorized which was doing work on my behalf . I immediately went to my settings and unauthorized all the apps and authorized only the ones that I trusted . I then went and deleted the tweet from my timeline , I did not want any more of my followers/friends to think that I posted it .I also changed my twitter password for good measure . After all this I started writing this post .
So here are a few things to remember :
- Follower count is not everything in twitter , never fall for any tweet that gets you huge numbers of followers , they always have a catch
- Ok , a site will get you followers , but is it the followers that you want ?
- Be sure which application you are authorizing on twitter
- The Twitter OAUTH means that this thing can be you for all practical purposes
- Never even CLICK on shady sites that promise fancy things on twitter
- Never give out your twitter passwd unnecessarily , that is a big NO NO
- Keep changing your Twitter password frequently and like twitter says , be tricky !!
- Twitter also monitors accounts tweeting like this and sometimes they get locked out , be careful !
- Make an app earn your trust , inquire about it and then use it , don't just jump at it
- Be Ye Safe , on Twitter and reap the benefits of it
Why Web Site Uptime Monitoring is Important
The only trouble is how long was your site down? How many visitors did you loose? How many sales were lost? The questions are endless.
But even if your site is online it may be too slow for people to use at times throughout the day. How would you know this? Well truthfully you wouldn't but what you would see is a decrease in traffic. You might think you're loosing visitors when really it's just that your web site is too slow.
These questions plagued me for some time about my site. The good news is there are services that will send you an email (or text message to your cell phone) the minute your web site goes down. They will also measure how fast your site is throughout the day and give you nice graphical reports of how your site is performing hour-by-hour and day-by-day.
I recently came across such a service called InternetUptimeMonitor.com. They do all of the above and I've been pretty pleased with their service on my site. It gives me a lot of piece of mind knowing that throughout the day if my site goes down I'll get an email.
If I have a day with low traffic do you know the first place I check? You got it-InternetUptimeMonitor.com. Why? Because maybe my site was really slow and that's why my traffic was down!
InternetUptimeMonitor.com offers two flavors of their service Free and Paid (for Businesses). The differences between the two accounts are how often they check your site, if they watch it from around the world or just the USA, and if you get cell-phone text messages alerts or just email alerts.
If you're a business that's making any money at all online I'd recommend their business (Gold membership) because it costs you too much money to have your site down. If you've got a blog and use it for fun or aren't making much money yet use the free membership.
Use this link below you'll get 65% off their premium package when you're ready to order. This is a special link I've been given for readers of my site and it's not available to the general public:
Start Monitoring Your Website Now
Everyone should monitor his or her web site because you never know the next time your site will go down.
Social Media in India : A new-born tiger ?
The on-line community is abuzz with the Social Media Blitz that is taking the world by storm now ! Even news media veterans are calling out to keep up with the Social Media . Everyone is now by default assumed to have a blog or a twitter page . IM is passe and tweets are in . The Net is here to stay and the crowd is on it . What about the scene is India , the country with a clearly huge number of knowledge and IT workers in the world ? I thought that this would make a good post for today , so here goes ...
The oldest memory I have of anything "Social" on the net in India is egroups , everyone who had net access in the late nineties either had or belonged to an egroup that had a bunch of people with something in common . Back then it was cool to be in an alumni egroup or a java egroup and things like that . There was a lot of focused discussion happening in these groups and it was very useful for the members . In many ways it was also instrumental is nurturing the phenomenal talent pool that India had . Then the IM revolution happened , everyone had either an "official" yahoo or hotmail id and hence got affiliated to one of the messenger clients . The IT services companies that had the guys working for them started buying better software for the proxy servers and IM blocks became a way of life . Around this time , egroups sold out to yahoo and yahoogroups was born . The power of the egroup expanded exponentially . Then the employers in India dealt a definitive death knell to accessing yahoo and hotmail from work when a vast majority blocked accessing external mails from office and to this day many companies follow that religiously .Along came Google and gave you the power to forward mails to any id you want and everyone was free again !! Blogger became a hit the minute people realized the power of push button publishing . At this point it is worth noting that that Indians are by nature a talkative lot and good expressers by extension of that . The Indian adoption curve to blogging was amazing and the sheer depth a quality of the Indian Blogosphere is amazing , to say the least ! There were general blogs with stupendous following and there were niche blogs that were deep and steep . Suddenly , the bloggers were here !!
The micro-blogging edge of twitter came and took us by storm . The tweetverse had a considerable Indian edge now , including yours truly at @v_shakthi . The most stunning demonstration of the power of twitter in India was during the coverage of the 26/11 terror events in Mumbai where the mainstream media actually derived live info from tweeple and acknowledged it openly . The BBC's online coverage of Indian Elections aggregated real time tweets from India to get reactions and trends (yes , me too featured there !! ) . So Tweets are here and they are here in a Big way and to stay .
Coming to the point of this post , what about India as a whole ? Well there are a few deeper issues here . India still has miles to go in terms to adoption of the internet as a source of information and the alignment of infrastructure to support that . The available infrastructure is limited to urban and semi-urbanized areas and penetration of technology is still a myth here . Both of these need to change . Next is the corporate mindset and adoption ratio , Indian corporates all have net presence but only a woeful minimum are Net-savvy . The crappy policies restricting access and work should go and people should realize the utility of leveraging the net for information in constructive ways . Companies need to evolve a tech and net savvy policy base to facilitate that . Stupid rules like you can't carry your personal laptop to work should go and things should get better . I am also eagerly awaiting the impact of 3G mobile networks on Internet adoption . If used correctly that can be a killer method for rural penetration . I hope the Telcos smart up to that and get it going .
Hence the Final verdict is , the Tiger is new-born here , it is up to us to put it in a circus or a forest !!
See you in the next !!
Aug 2, 2009
What if my twitter account is suspended ?
Why are twitter accounts suspended?
Account suspension occurs when an account is flagged for suspicious activity. One or more of these things may cause an account to be suspended:
- Terms of Service Violations
- Technical Abuse
- Spam Investigation
Please read the Twitter Rules to find out more about violations.
How do I find out why my account was suspended, or get account suspension lifted?
Our Spam/Abuse or Support team researches suspended accounts. If you feel your account has been wrongly suspended, please visit Twitter Support and file a request. If you're logged into Twitter, you can visit Twitter Support by clicking the help link directly from your Twitter account.
Submit a request: your ticket will be submitted to Twitter Support and we'll email you a ticket confirmation. Accounts may be suspended for a minimum of 30 days for research. Check on your ticket status anytime by visiting your Twitter Support home page and clicking Check on your existing requests.
If you're unable to submit a request through our help form, please send an email to suspended@twitter.com.
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