Hey Guy’s and Gal’s,

Oops! Twitter is down, but wait, it's only something Technically wrong

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything main stream about Twitter, but over the past few weeks, since the rollout of the new app, “Twitter Places” Twitter has found, more times than not, that trying to keep up with “The Jones” or trying to “Stay Ahead of The Curve” has put another twist in the mix.

And that twist is “Servability” ok, maybe that’s not quite the right word, but lately, at least from a users perspective, when they go to Twitter to post a tweet or reply to a friends tweet, they get the “Oops something is technically wrong message”.

Now I don’t know about you, but being a business owner, the “Oops!” just doesn’t cut it, when you’re up against a schedule and your time is very important.

You can have all the Twitter Tools, Tips and resources to help make your marketing efforts work together for the benefit of yourself and your followers, but if Twitter is down, then all the other apps are too.

So, what do you do when Twitter is down, and the “Fail Whale” swims into your harbor?

I know many of you have more than one marketing avenue in the mix, so what do you do when you have all these social media networks all tied together and one of those sites goes down?

What do you have in your arsenal that is tried, tested and approved to never let you down?

Until next time.
Have a wonderful day,
Tim

Hey Guy’s and Gal’s from the Twitter Watchdog Universe,

You may have noticed a little down time this morning if you attempted to access Twitter.
And low and behold, the AP from New York had this to say,

NEW YORK – The micro blogging site Twitter Inc. was out of commission for a couple of hours early Sunday for some of the roughly 100 million users around the world.

Instead of the usual screen that allows people to send a tweet, the home page indicated the site was down for “planned maintenance” but was expected to be back in a few hours.

It was accompanied by a cartoon.

According to a status website run by the San Francisco-based company, Twitter’s hosting provider, NTT America, was to start the maintenance at 2 a.m. EDT Sunday and it was to last about five hours.

Some tweets appeared to start moving again after about 90 minutes but some users were still unable to send messages hours later.

Ok, now that, that is over with, many people are still unable to access their twitter accounts, which I was one until about an hour ago. (I hope your account was ok)

Now we all know that planned maintenance is always good (for any business) but from what I’ve heard this has impacted many companies who use twitter primarily for customer support. If that’s you, then you can see the impact this may have your business.

Now I’m all for using Twitter for business, but it’s always good to have a backup plan, just in-case of situations like this.

What backup plan do you have in place for your business?
We’d love to hear your comments.

Have a wonderful day.

-By Timothy Caron @TimothyCaron

Rumors are flying around that Twitter is testing new features and settings
that would embed photo’s and video’s in your Twitter Stream.

The new feature/setting is said to be called Tweet Media. Certainly this
would really change the twitter user experience all for the good in my humble opinion.

Besides viewing photo’s and video’s by who you’re following, it’s been reported that users
we’ll have an option to view everyone’s photo’s and video’s.

Standby for more details as we receive them…

Please post your comments and what you know or would like to see with regards
to photo’s and video’s being embedded in your twitter stream..

Twitter recently posted an update regarding those missing from the Find People Search on Twitter.

We’ve updated this Known Issues page to include the issue of “searching for usernames with underscores.” Search is aware of this and we’ll update this page when it’s resolved.

To find Twitter accounts and follow them, access here

If you have or know someone that has a Twitter username with sn underscore in the name, stay tuned for updates here

Watching out for you, one tweet at a time -Twitter Watchdog

Follow Your Pal Al Ferretti @AlFerretti

Follow Skeeter Hansen @SkeeterHansen

In a blog post today, Twitter indicates that it has updated its terms of service, posting, “We will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.”

This points directly to third party Twitter ad networks like sponsored tweets (sponsored tweets) and ad.ly (ad.ly) who place advertisements into user timelines.

According to Twitter, the decision to remove third party ad networks is all about “the integrity and relevance of the timeline.” Certainly, this will now enable Twitter to completely run their own (with no competition) in house ad network called Promoted Tweets.

Pertaining to the Twitter ecosystem, Twitter states “we will also be specific about the boundaries we will draw in order to preserve the integrity, health, and value of the network.”

This decision by Twitter is sure to stir the pot with the people like sponsored tweets and ad.ly who have created business models around Twitter in order to monetize tweets. For twitter users, it looks to prevent future confusion as there now will likely only be one ad network, Twitters very own “Promoted Tweets.”

That leaves us with, what changes are coming next to Twitter?

Watching out for you, one tweet at a time -Twitter Watchdog

Follow Your Pal Al Ferretti @AlFerretti

Follow Skeeter Hansen @SkeeterHansen

Over the past year Twitter watchdog has reported various phishing scams that are happening on Twitter.

Today, we found another phishing scam and wanted to make sure you are aware of it.
This scam promotes getting more followers.

Beware of Tweets that say the following:
* FREE MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS!
* CHECK out this site, im a member of it, gets you more followers.
* WANT MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS?
* Get more followers for free!

Byron Acohido with the USA Today Technology Live reported this phishing scam titled:

Tweets promising free Twitter followers is a phishing scam

A cyber gang continues to flood Twitter with an intensifying phishing scam that has allowed the bad guys to grab control of thousands of valid Twitter accounts.

“This is an extremely viral campaign that’s spreading rapidly,” says Patrick Walsh, chief technology officer at network security firm eSoft.

The criminals are sending out microblog postings — Tweets — from legit Twitter accounts suggesting that people click to a web service that will instantly get them 50 to 100 more followers. Visitors to the web page are asked to type in their Twitter logon and password to use the service for free.

Of course the information gets routed to the bad guys. They then use an automated program to instantly log on to the victim’s Twitter account and blast out a similar Tweet once every few hours. The shortened links carried in these postings are constantly tweaked to avoid being blocked or filtered.

“This is by far the biggest type of attack like this that we’ve seen, in terms of how many people are getting affected and getting their accounts hacked,” says Lee Graves, eSoft threat communications specialist.

For the moment, the gang appears to be intent on amassing thousands of valid Twitter account logons. To cash in, the gang can later access the accounts and blast out spam for worthless drugs or antivirus subscriptions. Or they could Tweet out links to infected web pages designed to turn over full control of a visitor’s PC to the bad guys.

Read more on this story here

Just remember, it’s not about the quantity of followers, it’s about the quality of followers. Don’t fall for this scam. People having success on Twitter are doing it by engaging, building relationships and providing value. Not by getting a mass amount of random followers all for the sakes of larger numbers whom they can broadcast to. Don’t get scammed.

Help your followers by retweeting this post!

Watching out for you, one tweet at a time. -Twitter Watchdog

@alferretti

@skeeterhansen

We received reports today from people who noticed that the number of following and followers on their Twitter account went to 0. Don’t fret, (there’s a remedy) we got to the bottom of it and here’s what Twitter just reported a bit ago..

We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to “force” other users to follow them. We’re now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place. Follower/following numbers are currently at 0; we’re aware and this too should shortly be resolved.

Update (10:18 AM PST): Of note: protected updates did not become public as a result of this bug.

Twitter Source

A special thanks goes out to Dog for being the first one to alert us of the problem that now appears to be fixed. Thank you everyone for alerting us of the problem you were having on Twitter.

Watching out for you, one tweet at a time -Twitter WatchDog

@alferretti

@skeeterhansen