Word of Warning for Hummingbird, Bird Feeder Software Users

Jeremy Croft, an independent business owner and Twitter member of several months, has aspirations for earning a little extra money. With a fully developed and top-ranked SEO website on the internet, Jeremy has been able to develop some business for himself through word-of-mouth and a modest investment in wed advertising. But as with many private business owners, he isn't satisfied with the meager earnings of a costly start-up entrepreneurship.

Thus entered Twitter to Jeremy's rescue - or so he thought.

Twitter for Business?

Ever the avid Web surfer, Jeremy keeps up on technology tools that may help drive more business to his website. In recent months he has seen frequent advertisements for "Twitter friend finders", a kind of software which takes keywords a user would enter and searches for other users who recently twitted those same words.

Based on the assumption that people twit about what they're interested in, Jeremy would be haven able to use this software to find and "follow" these people with the hopes that they would follow him back to his Twitter site. There he would occasionally twit them over to his website, and thus generate more sales.

So he thought.

Hummingbird and Bird Feeder Software

Soon after purchasing the much-touted friend finder software Hummingbird (Mesiab Labs) and Bird Feeder (Pacesys Software), a combination of factors incorporated by Twitter.com renders Jeremy's investments ineffective. In the end, as both software packages performed as promised, Jeremy comes away asking for a refund.

While Jeremy was able to develop a following of several hundred Twitter members over a given period of time - much more than he would have been able to do by scouring the Twittersphere manually - he noted that Twitter allows an account user to follow up to only 1000 other Tweeters per day.

In addition, Twitter seems to discourage a high "following to followed-by" ratio (sometimes called TFF ratio) - with such discouragement including suspension of one's account. While some friend-finding software may only allow a user to follow many other Tweeters, Bird Feeder software has an "unfollow" feature that will help offset this ratio to more favorable proportions.

Twitter's Closures of Accounts on the Rise

In spite of observing the all rules - being careful not to add too many followings, keeping his TFF ratio in good measure, among other rules written and unwritten - Jeremy woke up one morning to find his account suspended.

Twitter: No Reply At All

"I don't know why they suspended me," pines Jeremy, "I submitted a trouble ticket with them, and got no response. Several days later I checked on my trouble ticket status, and it was listed as 'closed'". I guess they made a firm decision to block me out."

Whatever decision they made, Twitter made its decision without fairly consulting Jeremy on his intentions.

Smart Bird: Twitter Catching on to "Bot" Software?

Jeremy further surmises on his account's closure, "I guess that because I was using this software, there is a chance the way its activity shows up on Twitter's sever logs makes it look like botware."

The "botware" - or "robot software" - that Jeremy refers to is a form of automated software that maleficent account holders use to generate new accounts on Twitter. These account holders afterwards use "robot software" to spam other users with advertisements and other information that clutter up the Twitter platform.

Hummingbird, Bird Feeder: Usless for Now

"I guess I came in too late on the game," surmises Jeremy. "With Twitter now allowing only limited following and unfollowing of other users, the time could I spend opening a new account would be a waste."

"What's to stop them from closing my new account?"

"Forget about Twitter. They're definitely not friendly to legitimate business owners like me. I'm just some guy operating out of my home office, and they shut me down. I'll go elsewhere to get advertisement."

As word of Twitter account suspensions spreads apparently due to botware detection, semi-automated software like Hummingbird and Bird Feeder software are rendered ineffective.

And much to the chagrin of legitimate business owners like Jeremy, who had formerly hoped to leverage Twitter as a possible advertising medium.

Twitter's Other Troubles

Whether fair or unjustified, the closure of some accounts may not come as a surprise to some.

Given in recent weeks Twitter has been subject to numerous DoS (denial of service) and other attacks unleashed by hackers - with reports of some such attacks originating from Russia - Twitter no doubt is stepping up its efforts to scrutinize its users' activities.

With these and other problems at hand, the question of Jeremy's account closure falls on deaf ears. At the time of this writing, Twitter's relationship with legitimate commercial customers remains undefined at worst, tenuous at best.

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