Twitter goes on account-suspension rampage -- @BostonTweet shut down!
If you've been on Twitter today you've probably noticed some chatter about an abnormal number of accounts being suspended -- one tweet guesstimated the number to be in the hundreds of thousands, which seems apocryphal. But something is definitely very, very amiss. Mashable reports that one of its own reporters, and one of the LA Times accounts, have gotten shut down. A quick search of the terms "suspended" or "account suspension" will give you a sense of the shock and outrage. The best guess appears to be that Twitter is going on a suspension rampage to combat rampant spamming -- which, y'know, would be nice. This post suggests the net has been thrown extraordinarily wide (@blockbuster -- dead?), and suggests steps for getting your account back. Except that there's also an awful lot of collateral damage . . . including Boston's own BostonTweet, a threaded message-board-style application that's been gaining traction for months.
We attemped to email BostonTweet honcho Tom O'Keefe, and for all we know he may have emailed us -- we just found out that our IT dept locked our email account, and we won't have access to it until tomorrow. (When we get in, we will be visiting upon our IT department the same wrath that BostonTweet is likely wishing upon Twitter right now.) While the @bostontweet account is down, the BostonTweet website is up . . . just inactive at the moment, with a couple of users more or less screaming, "WTF?"(Worse, it appears that while @bostontweet was taken down, a spambot account at @bostontweets is still up . . . did Twitter shoot the hostages?!)
In the meantime, if anyone has been shut down for no reason, let us know in the comments . . . or if you've got an alternate Twitter account, shout at us @bostonphoenix, we'll be attempting to RT as many cries for help as possible.
