So I created the Twitter Account @WorldScouting in July 2008 and had a custom RSS Feed to update it from January this year with any World Scouting News from the WOSM Website. It gained a number of followers, from the emails I received, over 1,350 Scouters started following the account. I even noticed that there was a link on the official scout.org website to follow them on Twitter, linking to that account.
This evening I received an email from Twitter themselves:
HiThat is fair enough... I put my hands up, it was me, I broke the rules. However my issue is the way this happened. Was it a request from WOSM to close the account or did Twitter come across the account themselves and act on their own? Was I given a chance to answer why I did it and if I wanted to transfer ownership over to WOSM?
It has come to our attention that your Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/worldscouting
is in violation of the Twitter Rules:
* Trademark: We reserve the right to reclaim user names on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those user names. Accounts using business names and/or logos to mislead others will be permanently suspended.
In this case "trademark" is the issue. To avoid confusion regarding brand and/or official affiliation with the business/company in question, we've removed your profile from the site.
Thanks,
Twitter Support
A few weeks ago I did notice that a new account has been set up as @worldscouting2 and that account seems to have taken the place of my @WorldScouting. This new account has a classy new low resolution JPG instead of a PNG as an avatar giving a poor quality effect. They also don't capitalize their name properly (@worldscouting should be @WorldScouting)
That's only a little thing that annoys me, but the biggest annoyance is the fact that over one thousand people on Twitter who were getting frequent updates and retweeting them (over 140 retweets) now have no idea that the account that they were following does not exist anymore and they have to re-follow the new @WorldScouting to start receiving updates!!
My message to the guys in Geneva, I'm sorry I provided a service that you didn't offer at first. It wouldn't have been very hard to find out who ran the account. A quick tweet with "@worldscouting who runs this" would have gotten a reply from me. I would have happily handed over the log in credentials and you could have kept all the followers, after all I am a good Scout! Instead you went running to cut off the head, losing over 1,350 followers!
(On a side note, this gives me food for thought with all the other accounts I have... might go on a deleting spree!)
