why?
simply put, we were aggressively following/unfollowing members.
but why would you do that?
at first it was to experiment to see what would happen. we received numerous @ reply mentions, clicks on links and additional followers. once we looked at our feedback we thought, “why don’t we just keep going?”
websites we used that led to our demise*
amateurs (websites or strategies we used in the beginning)
- friend or follow
- follow users on a list - our method was simple. 1. follow users on the list, NOT the list 2. change the view from expanded to list. zoom out on the browser so you can view the entire list on one page without scrolling down. go clicker happy, i could follow a 20 users within 10 seconds.
professionals (these websites automate the process, which allowed us to scale our “spamming”)
*please keep in mind, these websites will not exclusively get you suspended from twitter. it is the combination and repetition of using these services.
don’t do this
aside from growing our follower base, the karma of spam came back to haunt us. the bulk of our followers became irrelevant companies, “internet marketers” and bots.
how to solve the problem
- twitter will contact you regarding the suspension
- state your case by replying to the email or ticket number; falsely accused, recognize your fault or just plain mistake (our email below)
- check the status of your “ticket”
- further contact may be needed to resolve the issues
- twitter will contact you regarding their decision regarding the suspension
Hello, My name is Vikash Shah and the account for @hashtagd has recently been suspended. After going over the “Following Best Practices help page” I can see how we may have been guilty of a few practices. We here at @hashtagd are truly sorry and appreciate the last sentence on the help page, “Aggressively following and un-following accounts is frustrating to other Twitter users, and degrades the Twitter experience for everyone.” The last thing we want to do is frustrate the users of Twitter. We are aware of our current suspension and are grateful that our account has not been deleted. We appreciate if a second chance would be awarded. Thank you for taking the time to look over our request and await your reply. Vikash Shah
what are we going to do now?
- complete hashtagd.com version 2
- build our brand and community
- the rest will follow
