Submitted Nov 04, 2008 by crystal

Getting to know Twitter

What is it?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co?workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.
People write short updates, often called "tweets"
of 140 characters or fewer.
These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

Do I need anything special to use it?

All you need to use Twitter is an internet connection or a mobile phone. Join us here! Once you're in, type your first update into the web box.
To get an idea of what other people are saying or doing on Twitter, check out Twitter search to see what Twitter's all about.
You can search by keyword or just check out the trending topics to see what's hot on Twitter right now.

How do I find my friends?

When you create an account, you can search for people by name or user name, import friends from other networks, or invite friends via email.
If you don't want to do that, follow some of the people we've suggested. Once you've found your friends, follow them to start getting their updates.

What does it mean to follow someone on Twitter?

Following someone simply means receiving their Twitter updates.
When you follow someone, every time they post a new message, it will appear on your Twitter home page.
New messages are added to your home page as people post them, so you always get the updates in real time.
When you log in, you can see what the latest updates are.
Twitter offers other ways to follow people too: you can get updates from certain people on your phone!

How do I know who I'm following?

After you click the follow button on someone's profile, you're following them.
The follow button will change to a green check mark next to the word "Following" with an actions button on the right to remove a person if you want to. If you've registered your phone with Twitter, you can set up text preferences for a person as well.
See a list of people you're following by clicking on the following link on your profile or your home page's sidebar.

How do I know who is following me?

Twitter sends you an email when someone new follows you.
Set up your email preferences to notify you when you have a new follower.
The followers link on your profile page or home page's sidebar will also tell you how many followers you have.

What are follow limits?

Twitter recently added follow and update limits for stability and abuse control.
You can read more about this here.

Who reads my updates?

It's up to you.
Your followers read your updates, and anyone else who comes across them in a search. Your Twitter profile is public by default; if you're hesitant to have strangers read your updates, protect your profile to approve followers and keep your updates out of search.

Can I block people from following me?

Yes, you can. If you block someone, they won't be able to follow you or send you any messages.
If your account is public, they'll still be able to view it, but they won't show up on your followers list, and you won't be on their following list.
If it's a spammer you're blocking, thanks!
Twitter Support keeps an eye on block reports to see who's getting in trouble on Twitter.

How can I send updates to Twitter?

Twitter offers many ways to post updates: from the web in the update box, from your phone,
from your mobile web browser using m.twitter.com, or from any third party application made by the talented folks who've utilized our API.

Why is there a star at the end of updates?

The star is a way for you to mark an update as favorite.
People can view your favorites, and you theirs, by clicking on the Favorites link in the profile page.

Can I put my Twitter updates on my blog?

Yep! Put a Twitter widget on your blog, website, MySpace... anything that accepts Javascript or HTML.
You can even customize your Twitter badge to match!

What are @Replies?

An @reply is a public message sent from one person to another, distinguished from normal updates by the @username prefix. If a message begins with @username, we collect it as a reply. Reply publicly to any update on Twitter by using the @username format.
Following is not necessary to reply to someone, and all of your replies are visible in the @username tab in your home page sidebar. (Tweets with @username elsewhere in the tweet are also collected in your sidebar tab; tweets starting with @username are replies, and tweets with @username elsewhere are considered mentions.) Please note that if your account is private, users who are not following you will not see your @replies or mentions.

What are Direct Messages?

Direct messages are private messages sent from one Twitter person to another.
You can only send a direct message to a person who follows you.
When you receive a direct message, we save it in your direct message inbox, accessible from the Direct Message tab in the sidebar in your home page.
Set your email preferences to notify you by mail if you have a new message.

Can I edit a tweet once I post it?

Nope. Once it's out there, you can't edit it.
You can delete an update by clicking the trash icon on the right end of the update, but you can't make changes.

What is the difference between an @reply and a direct message?

An @reply is a public message sent regardless of follow-ship that anyone can view.
A direct message can only be sent by someone you follow, and is a private message that only the author and recipient can view.

What does RT, or retweet, mean?

RT is short for retweet, and indicates a re-posting of someone else's tweet. This isn't an official Twitter command or feature, but people add RT somewhere in a tweet to indicate that part of their tweet includes something they're re-posting from another person's tweet, sometimes with a comment of their own.Check out this great article on re-tweeting, written by a fellow Twitter user, @ruhanirabin.

Why can't I see all my tweets? My tweet count is _,___. Are they lost?

The good news is they're not lost or gone! We have all your tweets. The bad news is that we currently only allow you to see the 3200 most recent tweets (this could also be construed as good news, as that number could be lower than 3200). The other good news is that we are eventually going to build something that will allow you to see ALL your tweets. Among the gazillion things we want to do to make Twitter better, this hasn't yet reached the top of our list, which is largely based on what we hear from people like you. At some point, you'll be able to get on a twime machine, visit your twistory, and tweminisce. That will be a fun day!

How do I post a picture to Twitter?

Twitter doesn't offer an official picture posting feature of its own, however, most people use a third party application (a popular one is TwitPic) to post pictures to Twitter accounts. Check out other photo and video apps on the Twitter Fan Wiki here! Note: Twitter doesn't officially support Twitpic or other third party applications, but you can usually find them on Twitter (follow TwitPic here) to get help or find out the latest updates!

Why won't my feed reader take my @reply RSS feed?

The @replies RSS feed requires authentication; most web-based feed readers don't support authentication.
If yours doesn't, you won't be able to see your @replies via rss feed.
Try the feed in a desktop feed reader, which usually supports authentication.

Is there a Twitter API?

Yes, complete with documentation and an active developer group to help you with common API questions.
You can find it at the bottom of your logged-in homepage, here.

I'm an app developer, how do I get white listed?

Send a request to white list your application from the API Wiki, here.

Does Twitter allow html in web updates?

No.
We escape all html for security purposes.
However, if you paste in a link that is less than 30 characters, we'll post it in its entirety.
If it's longer than 30 characters, we'll convert it to a shorter URL.

How do I report spam?

Report spam by following Twitter's spam account, and sending us a direct message containing the username of the spammer. Also, we encourage you to always block any spammers you find. Twitter Support keeps an eye on block reports to see who's getting in trouble on Twitter.

Why are accounts suspended?

Accounts are suspended for Terms of Service violations or spam investigation.
Read more about this here.

Where can I find out more information about Twitter's Terms of Service?

Twitter's Terms of Service is posted on the site, and the Twitter Rules are posted in the Support home page.
Check out Twitter's Terms of Service and Rules policies here.

How do I submit a complaint about copyright, impersonation, trademark, or other Terms of Service issues?

Review our Terms of Service section to find out what constitutes a violation, and how to go about fixing a related problem.

What is Get Satisfaction?

Get Satisfaction is a great site that people use to help each other figure out problems on Twitter.
They call it "people powered customer service" because people are there, helping each other out.
If you're looking for help using Twitter from other Twitter users, this is a great resource. If you're looking for official Twitter Support, you'll find it by clicking on the Help link from twitter.com.

Is there a place where I can find out if there are problems with Twitter?

Yes.
Check (and subscribe to!) Support's Known Issues page, read the Twitter Status Blog, or follow @twitter. To unsubscribe, click on the link from the email, or visit the forum again and unsubscribe there.

Still wondering about something?
Check out our help resources for more information!

Submitted Oct 15, 2009 by Lukester

This page is a basic introduction to Twitter's rules and best practices. The Twitter Rules is our comprehensive list of account behaviors that could land you in hot water (such as account suspension or filtering from search). In addition to the Twitter Rules, we've posted additional resources on some of the most common questions on Twitter best behavior:

Following: Automated pro-active following and automated un-following are not allowed. If an account seems interesting, feel free to follow it! When you follow someone, they will often take the time to check our your profile and recent Tweets. If some accounts are aggressively or indiscriminately following hundreds of accounts just to get attention, it can really bother other users and make Twitter a less-nice place to hang out. Our Following Limits and Best Practices has all the information you need for good following on Twitter!

@Replies: You can direct a Tweet at a specific Twitter user using @replies and mentions. The @reply feature is intended to make communication between users easier, so please don't abuse it by posting duplicated, unsolicited @replies to lots of users' replies tabs. This is considered spam behavior!

Trending Topics: Participating in Twitter trending topics are a great way to join a world-wide public conversation. Our Trending Topics help page has information on how to join in. Please don't post unrelated Tweets to trending topics in order to get attention?your account may be suspended!

Search (and contests!): Twitter Search is a powerful way to find out what folks are talking about, right now. We may filter accounts from search if they're degrading the search experience for other users (by posting lots of duplicate links, for example). Our Search Troubleshooting Page has all the best practices for remaining in search. If you're wanting to enter lots of contests on Twitter, please check out that page, and be careful not to post duplicate contest Tweets. Folks wanting to run a contest on Twitter should check our Contest Guidelines for some rules and helpful tips.

Automation: Thinking about adding some account automation? External developers have created some amazing tools and services for the Twitter community. Take a look at our Automation Rules and Best Practices for a discussion of the best ways to automate your account without spamming or bothering other users!

Tweet well everybody!

Submitted Feb 18 by emilypinkerton

Below are articles that will help you get familiar with your Twitter Profile and Account Settings:

Public vs Protected Accounts

Customizing Your Twitter Profile

Changing Your Password

Changing Your Email Address or Notifications

How To Change Your Username

How To Deactivate Your Account

Account Restoration Is Currently Unavailable

How Do I Find My RSS Feed?

How Do I Find My User ID?

Confirming Your Email Address

Logging Into Your Account

The "That's You!" Message

Username Troubleshooting

Twitter Profiles in Google Search Results

Submitted Nov 06, 2008 by crystal

Public or protected (private)?

When you sign up for Twitter, you have the option of keeping your account public (the default account setting) or protecting the account to keep your updates private. Public accounts have profile pages that are visible to everyone, and anyone can follow public updates without approval from the account owner.

Protected accounts receive a follow request each time someone wants to follow them, and only approved followers are able to see the profile page. If the idea of strangers reading your Twitter updates makes you feel a little weird, try protecting your profile at first. You can always change your mind later. Please note: If your account is protected, we assume that you only want your followers to see your updates. @replies sent to people who aren't following you will not be seen.
If you want to interact with everyone on Twitter, you should not protect your account.

Protecting your Twitter profile

Not everyone has to see your Twitter updates. Keep your Twitter updates private and approve your followers by protecting your profile. You can protect your profile in your account settings page. Protected account owners control who is able to follow them, and keep their updates away from the public eye. Private accounts can can always go public by un-checking the box in account settings.

To protect your profile:

1. Log in to Twitter

2. Click Settings

3. Scroll down and check the box next to "Protect my Updates"

4. SAVE your changes.

When you navigate to your home page after protecting your profile, you'll see a notice reminding you that your profile is now protected.

If I'm public and I decide to protect my profile, what happens?

If you have a public account and you protect it, all updates after the time of protection will be protected. Your profile will only be visible to approved followers, and existing followers will not be affected. You don't have to approve existing followers, nor do you have to follow them. You can stop sending updates to these followers at any time by clicking "remove" in your followers page. After protecting your profile, people will have to request to follow you, and each follow request will need approval. You can allow people to follow you without following them back.

When someone requests to follow me, what happens?

When someone who has requested to follow you visits your profile, they'll see a note saying "You've requested to follow this person. Remove?" until you have taken action on the follow request or the request has been canceled. Keep in mind that when you protect your profile, you:

must approve all follow requests for people who want to receive your Twitter updates

exclude your information from Twitter search results

cannot share static page URLs with non-followers

If I let someone follow me, do I have to follow back?

No. You can allow someone to follow you without following them back. If you change your mind and want to revoke follow privileges, visit your followers page, and click the remove button.

Protected/Private Profiles & Search

Please note that tweets from protected profiles will not appear in search results. People will still be able to find your account using the Find People search tool but only people you've approved to follow your account will be able to see your tweets. Also note that any tweets posted while your profile is private will remain private indefinitely, and tweets posted while your account is public will remain public indefinitely.

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

How do I change my picture?

The default avatar isn't so bad, but your friends will be happy to see your shining face.
Change your picture in the 5th tab of your account settings page, the profile tab. Your picture can be up to 700k, and we support JPG, GIF, and PNG formats. To change your picture:

Log in to Twitter

Once logged in, look in the navigation bar at the top of the page and click Settings

Click the 5th settings tab, Profile

Click Browse and select one of your pictures (or the
Click Save at bottom of the page (see screenshot below)

We no longer support animated .GIF files.
If you already have a picture other than the default image, click "delete current" and follow the steps above.

If you are having trouble uploading a profile picture, please see our troubleshooting page.

Designing your profile page

The 6th tab in Account Settings is Design, and we encourage you to do exactly that!
Customize your profile page with one of our 20 profile templates, or get creative with your profile by changing the colors of the background, text, links, sidebar, and sidebar border to create a custom profile of your own.

You can add background images large or small, and even tile an image if you'd like. Background images must be in PNG, GIF, or JPG format, smaller than 800k. If your image's file size is too large, the easiest way to get it down is to use and image editing program or web app to shrink the image. To customize your design:

Log in

In top navigation bar, click Settings (or go to http://twitter.com/account/settings)

Click the last settings tab, Design
Select a template, change your text and background colors, or upload your background image

Save your changes

While there is no minimum size for your background image, the max is 800k, which will resize the maximum width to 2048.
To start from scratch with the default background, select "Use the Twitter default style" and save your changes.

Updating your name, bio, and location info

The 1st tab in Account Settings is Account. In addition to updating your username/email, you can update your real name, default language for viewing Twitter, and timezone.

To change the location, website, picture, or bio listed on your profile, visit the 'Profile' tab under Settings, make the desired changes, and click 'Save.'

Submitted Nov 18, 2008 by crystal

Forgot your password?

Locked out? Twitter protects your account by limiting log in attempts. If you're locked out, wait an hour and try again.

Forgot? Visit the Twitter homepage and send yourself a password reminder by clicking the link underneath the sign in box. Choosing a strong password, ideally with letters, numbers, and symbols, is important. Keep your Twitter account secure by choosing strong passwords that no one would guess.

Caution! Be wary when entering your Twitter user name and password into 3rd party applications-- only enter your password if you really trust a site. If you notice odd behavior on your account, change your password immediately as a first precaution, especially if you use 3rd party applications.

We'll also send you a password if you visit this link and enter the email address you signed up with.
If you've changed the email address or
aren't receiving the email password, please be sure to check your junk/spam filter to make sure it's not there.

Changing your password in your web settings

All account information is editable in your Twitter account settings, and you can make changes to your password in the password tab.

To change your password:

Log in to Twitter

In the upper right hand top navigation bar, click settings

Click the second tab, Password
Enter your current password, add and verify your new password

Save your changes

If you're able to log in but still can't remember the password, you can send yourself a password reminder from the password settings page as well.

If you're having trouble logging in or resetting your password, please see our login troubleshooting information.

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

How do I change my email address?

Twitter uses your email address to let you know about changes to your account. Change your email address in your account settings page.

When you have entered your new email address in the 'Email' field, click 'Save.'

A dialog box will then appear asking you to confirm your Twitter password. Enter your password in the box and click the 'Save changes' button. After you do so, a yellow box will appear above the area where you typed your email field, notifying you that a confirmation email has been sent to the new address you have chosen. If you do not click the link in the confirmation email, the changes you made to your email will not be saved - in other words, emails sent to you by Twitter will continue to go to your original email address.

Twitter never shares your email address with third parties. Friends using the contact import feature to find email contacts may locate your profile if you are one of their contacts, but your email address will never be revealed. We've recently added password verification for email address or user name changes as a measure of security.

How do I change my email preferences?

You can change your email preferences in the notices section of your settings page. You can set your email preferences to to let you know when:

someone new follows you

you have a new direct message

To change your email preferences:

Log in to Twitter

Click Settings

Click Notices

Check/un-check the notification boxes to reflect your email preferences

Save your changes

Not receiving emails, or having other problems?
Check out our troubleshooting section for help.

Submitted Nov 17, 2008 by crystal

What's the difference between your real name and your user name?

Your user name is like a screen name; it's how people will come to know you on Twitter. It appears in your profile URL and is unique to you. User names are used for login, @replies, direct messaging, and more. Your user name appears alongside your profile image in friends' timelines each time you update, and we also include it in all outgoing text messages.

Your real name is your full name, displayed in the sidebar of your profile page and used to identify you to friends. This can be helpful if your user name is something mysterious, such as @ic0n, or @meangrape. Some people choose to put something other than a name in that field.

How do I change my real or user name?

Changing your name(s) is easy! Visit your Twitter account settings to change both your real and user name.

1. Log in to Twitter
2. In the upper right hand navigation bar, click Settings
3. Change the name in the real name or user name field
4. Save your changes

Changing your user name will not affect your existing followers, direct messages, or @replies. They will simply see a new user name next to your picture when you update. It is advisable to send out an update to your followers before you change your user name, because any replies or messages sent to your old user name will not be associated with your account once you've changed to your new user name.

How long can real and user names be?

Your user name can contain up to 15 characters. Why no more? Because we append your user name to your 140 characters on outgoing SMS updates and IM messages. If your name is longer than 15 characters, your message would be too long to send in a single text message.

Your real name can be 20 characters long. Although your user name may contain only 15 characters, many real names exceed 15 characters. Since we rarely send real name info via text message (except when using the WHO IS command) we added extra characters for folks (like Konstantin Gredeskoul) with longer names. Real names are also used in follow notification and request emails to help accurately identify folks with user names like cupcake25.

Early birds: you may have a user name or real name longer than user names we currently allow. This is ok until you need to save changes to your account settings. No changes will save unless your user/real name is the appropriate length; this means you have to change your real/user name.

Having troubles with user names? Check our user name trouble shooting page for help!

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

Good...bye?

Deactivatng your account permanently removes your profile from Twitter. Note that deactivated profiles may take up to 30 days to clear from our internal systems. While the deactivation is being completed, usernames or email addresses cannot be used in the creation of new accounts. If you wish to use your username or email address with a future account, be sure to change them in your Settings page before you deactivate your account.
You can deactivate your account from your account settings page by clicking "Deactivate my account" at the bottom.

Before you do it, you should know...

This is final and permanent.

You do not need to deactivate your account to change your username; change it in account settings.
If you think you'll use the same phone number, username and/or email address on a future account, change them on the account before you deactivate it.

Account restoration is not available.

To deactivate your account:

Log in to Twitter

Click Settings

Click 'deactivate my account' at the bottom of the page

Verify that you really want to do it and voila, it's done.

Note: we change your settings immediately, and any/all old links appearing in a Google or other search index thus lead to error pages. However, these old links appear because Google and other search engines have cached old content in their search index. Twitter has no control over this, but you can send them a request to take it down.

Problems?
Submit a request and our Support team will help you out.

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

What is an RSS feed?

RSS stands for "really simple syndication."
It's basically a standard way of formatting information so that it can be easily and automatically collected and passed between different entities.
RSS format makes it possible to collect your favorite web pages (known as feeds) in one place- when new stuff is posted, you'll know.

It's kind of like Twitter, but for bigger content, like blog posts. Take, for example, a blog you love to read.
If you know you can't visit the blog page everyday but would like to read the latest posts from time to time, you can use the blog's RSS feed to subscribe.
Your feed reader automatically grabs the newest blog post and saves it for you until you have time to read it, just like Twitter grabs your friends' latest updates for you to read. Twitter provides an rss feed for several of its public web pages:

profile pages

replies pages

search pages

Feed icons display in the browser when viewing these pages, and RSS buttons are also in the sidebar of each page. If you want to read a person's updates without signing up for Twitter, or without visiting the site, just use the rss feed to subscribe.

Updating Twitter via RSS feed

Although we don't have an official application that will allow you to update Twitter every time your blog or website has an update, some smart folks using the API have created a free application called Twitterfeed specifically for posting an automatic update to Twitter every time your blog updates.
To understand how this works, look at a blog profile on Twitter:

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

What is a user ID?

A user ID is the number Twitter assigns to a profile.
Instead of using your name or email address to identify you, we assign you a user ID instead.
This way, you can change any of your personal information and we still know who you are. Twitter does all kinds of things behind the scenes with user IDs, such as relaying statuses, formatting rss feeds, and putting your contacts in order.
You're not required to know your user ID most of the time, but some third party applications may require it.

How do I find my user ID?

Your user ID can be found in several ways:

Click the rss icon in the right end of your browser to show your feed address in a feed reader , and note the number at the end of the rss feed

Hover over the rss button on your home, profile, or replies page to show the feed address at the bottom of your browser; your user ID is the number before ".rss"

Click the rss box
at the bottom of your home, profile, or replies page and look for the number at the end of the URL that pops up in your browser; it's the number before ".rss"

If you have the rss feed address of any Twitter page, you can always find the user ID, since it is always the number at the end of the link, just before the ".rss" suffix.
For example, in this rss feed:

Submitted Feb 23 by emilypinkerton

Twitter is a real-time information network where you can share what's happening with anyone. It's also a fun place to create an ongoing conversation with others who share similar interests. The resources below will help you start that conversation by finding and following others.

What Is Following?

Blocking Users on Twitter

Unfollowing Users on Twitter

Advanced Twitter Search Operators

Twitter Lists

About Verified Accounts


What Is Following?

Submitted Nov 06, 2008 by crystal

What is Twitter?

Twitter helps people communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent, 140 character messages. Choose whose messages you want to receive and how you want to receive them, or search all Twitter updates to see what people are talking about.

What is following?

Following someone on Twitter means getting their updates in your personal timeline. If you follow Poshy, you'll get her updates on your homepage when you log in, or on your phone if you've added it.
Your follower/following stats are listed on your profile page, and if you follow someone, they can send you private tweets, called direct messages, too.

See who follows you on your followers page, and make changes to who you follow on your following page.

Do you follow me? (What are followers?)

Followers are people who receive your tweets.
If you follow someone, you're their follower-- you receive their tweets in your homepage.
If someone follows you, they're your follower-- they'll receive your tweets in their home page, phone, or any application (like Tweetie, Twitterberry, etc.) they use.

Following is not like friend requests on social networking sites

Unlike most social networks, following on Twitter isn't mutual.
In other words, someone who thinks you're interesting can follow you, and you don't have to approve, or follow back. Deciding to follow back and changing your mind later is fine- just visit the person's profile page and un-follow; Twitter does not send a notification when you unfollow someone.

If you want to approve who follows your tweets, you can- just protect your account.
The same rules apply- you can approve followers, but you don't have to follow back.
If you change your mind, visit your following page, and remove them.

How do I follow someone?

Twitter is flexible-- you can follow people in a variety of ways. You can follow someone from:

The web

Click "follow" under any profile picture on Twitter.

If an account is protected, the owner will have approve your follow request before you'll receive their tweets.
Import your contacts from your address book to find friends already using Twitter, or invite friends who aren't on Twitter yet.

SMS/text message

Send follow username in a text message to Twitter to start following someone from your phone. For example: follow jymminie

Hint: when you add your phone number to Twitter, we'll tell you give you a phone number to text.

Mobile web

If you have a mobile web browser, use m.twitter.com to follow others, just as you would on the regular web.

If you need to use the full featured site, just view Twitter in Standard view.

Any 3rd Party Applications

Follow from any 3rd party application that supports it. Tweetie, for example:

support following, un-following, and all other Twitter features.
Pick the methods that work best for you, and tweet on the go.

You might ask yourself...

Can I restrict who follows me, or sees my updates?
Yes: protect your profile. Protecting your profile means everyone who wants to follow you submits a request for your approval. Only approved followers can see your Twitter updates, which will not appear in search engines.

Once I start following someone, can I stop?
Yes. Visit the profile page of the person you want to stop following, click the following button to expose the drop down box, and click "remove." Twitter does not notify you when someone has stopped following you.

I don't want a particular person to get my updates, but I don't want to protect my profile.
When all else fails, you can block someone from following you. Look for the block link in the sidebar of the profile page.

Submitted Oct 14, 2009 by ginger

What is following?

Following is a way to receive information, in the form of tweets,
from a person, company, or organization. If an account seems
interesting, you can follow that account and see their updates in your
timeline. This page discusses some of the limits and best practices
regarding following on Twitter.

What are the limits?

We don?t limit the number of followers you can have. However, we do
monitor how aggressively users follow other users. We try to make sure
that none of our limits restrain reasonable usage, and will not affect
most Twitter users.

We monitor all accounts for aggressive
following and follow churn (repeatedly following and un-following large
numbers of other users). You can read more about these below, but if
you don?t follow or un-follow hundreds of users in a single day, and
you aren?t using automated methods of following users, you should be
fine. Please note that the only automated following behavior that Twitter allows is auto-follow-back
(following a user after they have followed you). Automated un-following
is also not permitted. Please review our Automation Rules & Best Practices for more information on automating your account.

What is aggressive following?

Following users is a way to see their updates in your timeline. If
an account seems interesting, feel free to follow it! Many Twitter
users receive email notifications when someone follows their account or
check out the profiles of new followers to see if they share common
interests. If some accounts are aggressively or indiscriminately
following hundreds of accounts just to garner attention, it makes
Twitter a less-nice place to hang out.

What is aggressive follow churn?

If you decide to follow someone and then change your mind later,
that?s fine! You can just visit the person?s profile page and then
un-follow them. Aggressive follow churn is when an account repeatedly
follows and un-follows large numbers of users. This may be done to get
lots of people to notice them, to circumvent a Twitter limit, or to
change their follower-to-following ratio.

These behaviors
negatively impact the Twitter experience for other users, are common
spam tactics, and may lead to account suspension.

Additional limits if you are following 2000 or more people:
The
rules about aggressive following and follow churn still apply. In
addition, every user can follow 2000 people total. Once you?ve followed
2000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can
follow: this limit is different for every user and is based on your
ratio of followers to following. When you hit this limit, we?ll tell
you by showing an error message in your browser. You?ll need to wait
until you have more followers in order to follow more users?basically,
you can't follow 10,000 people if only 100 people follow you. When you
reach a daily or total limit and we show you an error message, you've
hit a technical limit imposed to limit egregious behavior by spam
accounts and to
prevent strain on the site. These are just the technical limits for your account; in addition, you are prohibited from
aggressive following behaviors. These behaviors may result in account
suspension, regardless of your account's technical ratio.

Limits
improve site performance by ensuring that when we send a person's
message to all of their followers, the sending of that message is
meaningful. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter, and everyone is
subject to them, including verified and developer accounts. Based on
current behavior in the Twitter community, we've concluded that this is
both fair and reasonable.

Why does Twitter monitor following behavior at all? Isn?t this a social network?

Twitter monitors following behaviors and limits some behavior in
order to make using Twitter a more positive experience for everyone.

Twitter
facilitates social networking, but it's not a social networking
website. In fact, the way Twitter works is quite different from social
networks: when you accept friend requests on social networks, it
usually means you appear in that person's network and they appear in
yours. Following on Twitter is different, because instead of indicating
a mutual relationship, following is a one-way action that means you
want to receive information, in the form of tweets, from someone.
Twitter allows people to opt-in to (or opt-out of) receiving a person's
updates without requiring mutual following.

If you follow too
many people, there?s no way you can keep up with everyone's updates in
your timeline. If you need to communicate with someone but don't need
to see their updates everyday, you don't have to follow them. Send them
an @reply when you need to; it doesn't require following and your
update will appear in the person's replies tab, so they can reply back.

In addition, limits on Twitter alleviate some of the strain on
the invisible part of Twitter, which prevents error pages and downtime
on the visible part. For the sake of reliability, we've placed limits
on actions like following, API requests per hour, and number of updates
per day (see this page for more information on updating and API limits).

Finally,
follower violations are one tactic that spammers often use to abuse
Twitter, so monitoring for abuse is one way to reduce spam on Twitter.

Using Third Party Applications to ?Get More Followers Fast!?

You may encounter websites or applications claiming they can help
you get lots of followers quickly. These programs may ask for payment
for followers, or ask you to follow a list of other users in order to
participate. The Twitter Rules addresses the use of these programs by disallowing:

Using or promoting third-party sites that claim to get you more
followers (such as follower trains, sites promising ?more followers
fast,? or any other site that offers to automatically add followers to
your account).

When you give out your username and password to another site or
application, you are giving control of your account to someone else.
They may then post duplicated, spam, or malicious updates and links,
send unwanted direct messages, aggressively follow, or violate other
Twitter rules with your account. When these applications do add
followers to your account, they are often abandoned or bot accounts
that are not reading your updates. If a third-party application causes
your account to violate the Twitter Rules, your account may be
suspended.

Some third-party applications have been implicated in
spam behavior, fraud, the selling of usernames and passwords, and
phishing. Please do not give your username and password out to any
third-party application that you have not thoroughly researched.

Following limits? But I'm whitelisted!

Some API administrators have whitelist status so their applications
can function without hitting certain system limits. Whitelisting means
that an application can have more API requests per hour; it does not
increase the follow limits. All whitelisted accounts are still subject
to follow limits.

So how am I supposed to get followers?

Remember, Twitter isn?t a race to get the most followers. If you
follow users that you?re interested in, it?s more likely that
legitimate users will find you and read your updates. People follow
other users on Twitter to read updates that are interesting to them.
Aggressively following and un-following accounts is frustrating to
other Twitter users, and degrades the Twitter experience for everyone.

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

Unfollowing people

Sometimes the following list gets a little unwieldy.
Luckily it's as easy to UN-follow someone as it is to follow them.
Removing someone from your following list means that you'll no longer receive their updates on the web or on your phone.

Unfollowing from your following page

To trim down your list, visit your following page to stop following more than one person at a time.

Unfollowing from the profile page

Remove a specific person by using the follow drop down box on their profile page.

Although you can't stop following someone's web updates from your phone, you can stop getting their updates via text message by sending LEAVE username, or OFF username, from your phone, like so:

off candice

leave candice

Even if you stop getting someone's device updates, you'll still see their updates on the web.
Before you remove a person, remember that you don't have to stop following people who reply to much or send too many updates for your text plan.
You can change your reply settings to filter out unwanted replies, and your device settings per person if you don't want to receive text updates from everyone.

Why would I want to Unfollow someone?

You can unfollow anyone at any time - for any reason (we won't tell!) We built the unfollow feature for those instances when you no longer wish to see a user's updates in your timeline, but may still want to view them on an as-needed basis. When you unfollow a user, you can still view their updates by visiting their profile page (unless their account is protected.)

If you are unfollowing a user because their updates seem like spam, please read our guidelines on reporting spam on Twitter.

If you want to make sure another user cannot follow you, please read our instructions on blocking users on Twitter.

Submitted Feb 22 by ginger

Blocking users on Twitter

We provide all Twitter users with the ability to block other users. Blocking prevents a user from following you, sending you an @reply or @mention, or putting your account on any of their lists.

To block a Twitter user:

Log in to your Twitter account

Go to the profile page of the person you wish to block.

Click the block link. This link is found in the Actions section in the right sidebar, and is also available in the drop-down Actions menu.

Blocked users are unable to add your Twitter account to their lists, and we will not deliver any of their @replies or mentions to your mentions tab (although these Tweets may still appear in search). We do not notify a user when you block them, but because they will no longer be able to follow you, they may notice that they've been blocked. Your profile picture will not appear on the blocked user's profile page or in their timeline. Please note that if your account is public (i.e., not protected), your Tweets will still be visible on your public profile page.

Unblocking Users

If you change your mind, you can easily unblock a person by clicking Undo or unblock from the blocked user's profile page.

Un-following and Reporting Accounts as Spam

In addition to blocking other users, you can also unfollow other users, or report other accounts as spam. Please see those help pages for more information on each of those functions.

Submitted Oct 23, 2009 by eddie

Can't find exactly what you're looking for in search? Use these operators to further refine your queries (or use the advanced search form):

Operator Finds tweets...

twitter search
containing both "twitter" and "search". This is the default operator.

"happy hour"
containing the exact phrase "happy hour".

love OR hate
containing either "love" or "hate" (or both).

beer -root
containing "beer" but not "root".

#haiku
containing the hashtag "haiku".

from:alexiskold
sent from person "alexiskold".

to:techcrunch
sent to person "techcrunch".

@mashable
referencing person "mashable".

"happy hour" near:"san francisco"
containing the exact phrase "happy hour" and sent near "san francisco".

near:NYC within:15mi
sent within 15 miles of "NYC".

superhero since:2009-10-22
containing "superhero" and sent since date "2009-10-22" (year-month-day).

ftw until:2009-10-22
containing "ftw" and sent up to date "2009-10-22".

movie -scary :)
containing "movie", but not "scary", and with a positive attitude.

flight :(
containing "flight" and with a negative attitude.

traffic ?
containing "traffic" and asking a question.

hilarious filter:links
containing "hilarious" and linking to URLs.

news source:twitterfeed
containing "news" and entered via TwitterFeed

Submitted Nov 06, 2009 by eddie

By popular demand, Twitter users can now organize users they follow (or users that they don?t) into groups, or ?lists?. This article will help you get started with some lists basics and hopefully get you ready to make your own!

Before we get started, it should be noted that following a user is not a requirement to add someone to a list; if you want to add a user but not necessarily regularly follow them, lists allow you to do that.

Creating a list

There are a few ways to create a new list, the easiest way is by clicking ?New list? on the twitter sidebar. Clicking on this link will pop up a box, as shown above. Here you can name your list. You can also make the list public (everyone can see it) or private (only you can see it). Current limits are:

20 lists per account

List names cannot begin with a numerical character

Add People to a list

You can add users (including yourself!) from most places on Twitter where profiles are listed. This includes the following:

?Find people? searches.

Profile pages (including your own).

Yours and other users followers and following lists.

Just keep an eye out for the ?lists? button next to any profile:

You can remove users from a list in the same fashion as you added them; just uncheck the box.

Checking out your Lists stats

On your Twitter home page, clicking on the ?listed? number (which is next to your ?followers? number) will bring up the following page:

The first tab you will see displays the lists that currently list you as a member. The first column of numbers represent the number of members of this list. The second column displays the number of subscribers to that particular list.

The second tab lists any lists you may have created with the same information listed in the first tab.

The Lists page

Now that you?ve created a list, you can visit the list page, as shown above. Here, you can perform lists maintenance, such as editing the list name (in blue) and deleting the list in it?s entirety (in red).

Note: Renaming a list will break any links you've posted to that list.

Subscribing/Following Lists

Following a list is as simple as following any other Twitter user. Simply navigate to the list page and click on ?Follow?, underneath the name of the list. You can quickly view your subscribed lists, as well as your own, on the sidebar.

You can also consequently remove yourself from a list by blocking the creator of the list.

Note: If the owner of a list that you're following includes a public user that you've blocked, you will still see the updates of the blocked user. This behavior is similar to visiting the profile page of a public user that you've blocked: you're still able to read their tweets.

Mentioning Lists

You can @mention any Twitter List as you would any Twitter user, just add a forward slash ?/? followed by the list name to list owners username:

@<username>/<listname>

Currently lists links will only appear on the Twitter web application, but will see more usage in third party applications as they are updated to recognize them.

Submitted Jan 19 by emilypinkerton

Welcome! People use Twitter to follow the sources most relevant to them and access information as it happens?from breaking world news to updates from friends. In just a few short steps, you'll be among these esteemed ranks.

The Basics

Navigate to http://twitter.com/ and select the green "Sign up now" button on the right hand of your screen,

or simply navigate to https://twitter.com/signup. This will take you to the main signup page.

The first field you will be asked to fill out is your full name. By using your real name, you increase your relevancy and familiarity with your followers.

Next, you will be asked to select a username. Try to pick something that describes you - whether it's a nickname, an interest or a hobby. I chose the name 'n00binat0r' to make sure everyone knows that I'm new to Twitter. This will be the name your followers use when sending @replies, direct messages, or Retweets. It will also form the URL of your home timeline. A preview of that URL is shown below for the username @n00binat0r.

Please note: You can change your username in your account settings at any time, as long as the new username is not in use. Usernames must be fewer than 15 characters in length, and cannot contain 'admin' or 'twitter' in order to avoid brand confusion.

Once you have selected an appropriate username, you will be asked to enter a password. Be tricky! Make sure your password contains letters, numbers, and symbols. Please do not use a password based on a word found in the dictionary.

Once you have entered a sufficiently strong password, please provide an email address. We use this to confirm your account before you can finish the signup process.

The next step is to prove that you're a human (not a machine!) by typing in the words shown in the Captcha before hitting the "Create my account" button. Please note: if you are having difficulty reading the words, you may request a new captcha, or you can select an audio captcha.

Finding Sources That Interest You

Because Twitter is more useful and fun when you're getting regular updates relevant to your interests, we ask that you select some of your interests from the left-hand side of the screen. This helps us suggest accounts you might like to follow. Each time you select an interest, a list of suggested users is generated. Clicking the 'follow' button next to a user's name will add them to the list of users you are following. This is indicated by the number in the green square above the list.

Tip: Create a 'following' list that's as varied as your interests. After you've followed users suggested in one area of interest, select another and find more sources to follow! When finished, click the blue 'Next: friends' button in the lower right hand side of your screen.

Here's where it gets personal: If you choose, Twitter can scan your email address book in order to find contacts that are also using Twitter. It's a fast and easy way to find your friends. Simply type your email address and your email password into the boxes, then hit 'Find friends.' Twitter does not store your login, and we will not use your email address without your permission.

When the scan is complete, Twitter will show you a list of the friends and colleagues it found in your address book. You can choose to follow all of them by selecting the blue 'Follow All' button on the right hand side of the results, or if you'd like to see updates only from specific people, you can choose to ask to follow your email contacts individually using the grey 'send request' button next to their information.

Once you have selected the friends and colleagues you wish to follow, click the 'Next: others' button at the bottom of your screen. A box will pop-up with your remaining contacts, those who are (sadly) not on Twitter. If you would like to invite them to join Twitter, simply check the boxes next to the contacts you wish to invite - or click "select all" at the top. Please remember that if you select all your contacts and proceed, it will invite all your contacts.

You're almost done! The final step of signup is to search for anyone else you would like to add on Twitter. In this case, I am going to search for Biz Stone, who did not show up in my contact import.

When I click the 'follow' button next to Biz's information, a confirmation message appears.

After you have searched, found, and followed any remaining friends or colleagues, click the blue 'Next step: you're done!' button to finish the sign up process. You will be taken to your home page, known as your timeline, where you can now share information via Tweets, as in the example shown below:

Press 'update' and you've successfully posted your first Tweet. Congratulations and welcome to Twitter!

Submitted Feb 25 by ls

You may have noticed that some Twitter accounts boast a blue "Verified Account" badge, like so:

This badge is Twitter's way of pointing out profiles that are the "real thing," so to speak. Verification is currently used to establish authenticity for people and businesses who deal with impersonation or identity confusion regularly on Twitter. You can find out more about the verification process here: http://twitter.com/help/verified


What Are Hovercards?

Submitted Feb 05 by emilypinkerton

It's a bird, it's a plane - it's a Hovercard!

Hovercards were designed with convenience in mind - they allow you to look up user information or change your settings for replying to or following a user without leaving your home timeline. Simply hover over the username or avatar of anyone who appears in your home timeline (even if you're just seeing their username in an @mention), and a snippet of their information will display. From this view, you can choose to follow the user if you do not do so already.

Clicking the 'more' button will yield more information on the user.

Clicking the gear icon in the lower right-hand corner of the hovercard will bring up a actions menu for your interactions with that user. From here, you can choose to Follow/Unfollow the user, send them an @reply or Direct Message (DM)*, block them, or report them for Spam.

*remember: you can only send DMs to users who are following you.

Hovercards will be rolled out to all Twitter users in stages so not all of you will be seeing them right away. If you don't see them yet, be patient! Meantime, you can familiarize yourself with the feature by watching the quick video below:

Can I turn them off?

Hovercards are a permanent feature added to enhance each user's experience of Twitter. It may take a few minutes to learn how they work, but once you get the hang of hovering and taking action without leaving your home timeline, you'll save so many clicks that you'll never want to come back down to Earth!

Submitted Feb 23 by emilypinkerton

Twitter has a lot of nifty features, but it's hard to know what they all mean or where to start if you're new. We authored the articles below to help you use Twitter like a pro and to address common questions users have about Twitter's messaging functions. They go from the basics - like posting a Tweet - all the way to our advanced features, like Geotagging.

Posting a Twitter update, or "tweet"

What is a direct message? (DM)

Geotagging on Twitter

How to delete a tweet

What is retweet? (RT)

What are hashtags (the "#" symbol)?

Trending Topics

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

Some people call them tweets

Twitter always asks the question, "What's happening?"
Each answer to that question is considered a Twitter status update, or what people often call a "tweet."
Each update is 140 characters or less. Once you've signed up, just type your first tweet in the update box. We'll even count the characters for you! Click the update button to post the tweet to your profile.

Another way (some say the best way!) to post updates is from your cell phone. Most exciting things happen while we're away from our computers. Set up your phone and send Twitter a text message, or if your phone has a web browser, use the special version of our site that's made for mobile web browsers, m.twitter.com.

How to post your first tweet

If you've started your account from the web, just log in and type something, and you're done!

Go to http://twitter.com and log in

Type your update into the "What are you doing" box

Click the update button

Your tweet will post to your profile page and you should see it in your timeline.

What do people tweet about?

Everything! From the most mundane (going to sleep) to the most personal, (having a baby!) people say it all on Twitter. You don't have to say exactly what you're doing, you can say whatever you want. Share random thoughts, post a link, say what you're listening to or what you dreamt about.
You can post something as simple as "Eating a sandwich."

But why would people do that?

People like to share. Companies, news agencies, celebrities, and even the President have information to share!
They use Twitter for fun, but also to share important information.
Twitter is a way for companies, celebrities and other organizations to communicate with people.

Twitter sends and receives millions of different kinds of messages from all over the world in real time. Suddenly what you're doing is also part of what everyone is doing, right at this very moment.
For this reason, news breaks first on Twitter. When something happens, Twitter is the first to know because people who are there are talking about it.
To see this for yourself, visit Twitter search and type in any word to see what people are saying about it right now. Check out the topics that are most interesting to all of Twitter in the trends section of the sidebar.

Why 140 characters?

We like to keep it short and sweet! It also just so happens that 140 characters is the perfect length for sending status updates via text message.
The standard text message length in most places is 160 characters per message.
We reserve 20 characters for people's names, and the other 140 are all yours!

How do I delete a tweet?

To delete a tweet that you have posted, please read this article. Note that you may only delete tweets which you posted yourself from your account. You may not delete tweets which were posted by other accounts. Instead, you can unfollow or block users whose tweets you do not want to receive.

I'm done reading this help article, now take me back to Twitter.com


What Is Retweet? (RT)

Submitted Nov 10, 2009 by crystal

Like a tweet? Retweet!

Sometimes you come across a tweet that you just have to share- tweets can be a big deal when they're newsworthy, informative, or even just really funny. Twitter's new retweet (RT) feature helps people quickly share information, which is pretty much what Twitter is all about.

Just hover over a tweet, click the retweet link, and you?re done! A click of a button shares an interesting tweet with all of your followers. Regretting your retweet? Hover over the retweet and click undo. Retweet has been rolled out to all users!

Recognizing retweets in timelines and profiles

Retweeting isn't just a great way to spread information through the twitter network; it's also a great way for you to discover new and interesting content.
Twitter now shows retweet information for all public tweets.

Retweets in timelines are distinguished by the retweet icon next to the author's picture.

When someone you follow retweets, you?ll see the original tweet and a picture of the tweet?s original author, with the retweeter?s name below.

Retweets in profiles are indicated by the retweet icon as well.

To credit a tweet's author, retweets show the profile picture, user name, and tweet of the original author, with "retweeted by" information appended at bottom.

Disabling retweets

If you don't want to see retweets from a particular account, just visit the profile and click the retweet icon to disable, but keep in mind, if you see a new face in your timeline, it's because someone you follow retweeted something they thought you should see.

Look for the retweet icon next to the user name when you don't recognize a face, and then look for the retweeter's name below- it should be someone you follow.
If the icon is green, you see retweets from that person in your home timeline.
(If you want to double check, hover over the icon.)
Turning off retweets is NOT retroactive. If the icon is gray, click it (it'll turn green)
to turn on retweets.

New retweet tab in the sidebar

Click ?retweets? in your sidebar to get retweet feedback-- see what you?ve retweeted, what?s been retweeted by people you follow, and who retweeted your tweets!

Retweets by others: read the retweets posted by people you follow under the first tab, 'Retweets by others.'

Retweets by you: read your own retweets- it's like the sent items in your email account.
If others have also retweeted, you'll see their profile icons listed.

Your tweets, retweeted: find out who retweets your tweets!

Please note that retweets, like regular tweets, from people you've blocked will not show up.

Frequently Asked Questions

People often wonder:

Can I set retweet preferences for people I follow from my home page?
No, you have to turn retweets off/on from profile pages.

Can I turn off ALL retweets?
Nope!
You can turn them off on a person by person basis, but you can't turn off retweets completely.
To disable all retweets, you will need to visit the profile pages of the users you no longer want to receive retweets from.
(Nope, there is no 'select all' option, unfortunately.)

When people visit my profile, can they view my retweets in a tab, like favorites?
Nope. People can view the retweets posted in your profile by scrolling through the your tweets and looking for the ones with retweet icons. Only you can see your retweet archives.

What if I retweet from apps like Tweetie, twhirl, etc?
Retweets, like regular tweets, will appear differently in different applications.
All retweets from third party apps (like Tweetie and twhirl) will show up in your retweet tab IF they're using Twitter's retweet API. (Not sure? Try retweeting from your favorite app, and then check the "retweets by you" tab on the web.)
Many apps have built in their own version of retweeting; retweets sent from apps that don't use the official feature will not appear in your retweet tab.

Are there limits on retweets? There's no limit to the number of times a tweet can be retweeted, but Twitter will only show the most recent 100 retweeters for any public tweet.


What is a direct message? (DM)

Submitted Nov 17, 2008 by crystal

Private Twitter Messages

In addition to public updates and @replies, you can send followers private tweets, called direct messages, too.
If someone is following you, you can send a direct message from the web via the "message" link on the profile page. (please note: you cannot send a direct message to a user who is not following you.)

You can also send direct messages from:

the reply icon attached to messages in your direct message inbox

the drop down box on the direct message inbox page (please note: this is a random selection of people who are following you, not the complete list.
If a follower's name is not on this list, use the options above or below)

the status update box using the direct message command: d + username + message

Tip: to reply to a regular Twitter update with a direct message from your home page, click the arrow/swoosh at the end of an update; this sets an @reply in the update box. Remove the '@' sign and replace it with a "d" and a space, and type the message.
People who have their direct message text and email notifications set to ON will receive direct messages on their phones and/or via email.
Tweets sent using any of the methods described above are not public: only author and recipient can view direct messages.

More like tweets, less like email

Direct messages behave more like tweets than emails: any action the sender of a DM takes on a direct message will affect the recipient of that DM. As the recipient of the Direct Message, you have the ability to delete it; the messages you delete also disappear from the sender's sent tab. Conversely, deleting direct messages you have sent will also delete the message from the recipient's inbox forever.

The number next to your Direct Messages tab reflects the number of direct messages in your inbox. If this number has changed recently and you have not deleted any of your messages, remember: the sender of the direct message has the ability to delete messages from your inbox, these messages are not mysteriously disappearing or getting lost.

Direct messaging from your phone

In addition to sending direct messages from the web, you can also send direct messages from different devices using d + username + message. (For example: d krissy I want to see that movie too; what are you doing this weekend? ) Send a direct message from:

your phone

most 3rd party applications

Note: If your message is longer than 140 characters and Twitter receives it intact, we will send your message in two parts for you.
But, beware: if your service provider breaks up long messages into two parts before sending the message to Twitter, we will only see the d+username attached to the first message!
The second part will post to the public time line as a regular update because it doesn't have the d+username preceding it.

Receive direct messages when other tweets are off

You can turn phone notifications OFF and still receive Direct Twitters from followers. Here's how:

Log in to Twitter.

In the upper right hand navigation, click Settings.

Click the third settings tab, Mobile.
Use the drop down box to select Direct Messages. This means only direct messages will come to your device.

You can also do this directly from your phone.
If notifications are ON, send OFF once to set your phone for direct messages only.
Send OFF twice to turn on off all notifications to your phone.
Haven't added your phone yet? Find more information about adding your phone here. Added your phone already?
Find out what commands you can use!

Looking for information about @replies/mentions? Click here.

Submitted Jan 19, 2009 by crystal

Delete a tweet

If you've posted something that you'd rather take back, you can remove it easily. When you hover over your update in when viewing your home or profile page, you'll see a star and a trash can at the end of the update. The star is for marking the update as a favorite, and the trash can is for removing it.

To delete a Twitter update:

Log in to Twitter

Visit your profile

Locate the update you want to delete

Click the trash can

Voila! Gone forever... almost. Deleted updates sometimes hang out in Twitter search. More about getting them out is here.


What are hashtags (the "#" symbol)?

Submitted Jul 28, 2009 by crystal

Hashtags: a Twitter community creation

Because Twitter provided no easy way to group tweets or add extra data, the Twitter community came up with their own way: hashtags.
A hashtag is similar to other web tags- it helps add tweets to a category.
Hashtags have the 'hash' or 'pound' symbol (#) preceding the tag, like so: #traffic, #followfriday, #hashtag.
Hashtags can occur anywhere in the tweet: some people just add a # before a word they're using, like so:

Other people use popular hashtags that already seem to have a set etiquette.
For example, Haiku hashtags, ever popular, usually list the hashtags at the end, like so:

Although hashtags aren't an official feature Twitter provies, their popular usage is usually visible on Twitter Search, which usually has a hashtag term in trending topics:

Topics range from things as serious as #iranelection to light birthday wishes for Souljaboy- it just depends on what people who use hashtags are talking about!

Using hashtags

If you add a hashtag to your tweet and you have a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your tweet.
Although any keyword with a # in front could be considered a hashtag, there are many commonly used hashtags.
Aside from not using hashtags for spam purposes, there are no formal rules for hashtag usage.
A few simple best practices we recommend include only using hashtags on tweets relevant to the topic, and not over-tagging a single tweet.
(This article, with all the hashtag information you ever wanted to know, recommends using hashtags sparingly, and using one to three per tweet, at most.)

Popular hashtag activity

Take a look at the third party site, hashtag.org,
to get an idea of popular hastags used on Twitter.

Find out about trends, look at small, pretty graphs, and search to see if the hashtags of your fantasies exist.

Submitted Jan 19 by Charles

If you're looking for a quick snapshot of the most tweeted-about topics on Twitter, refresh the your timeline and direct your eyes to the sidebar at the right. If you're not logged in, you can see an even deeper history of the most popular topics of the minute, day, and week on the twitter.com homepage.

From news stories, to the latest buzz about movies, music, video games, and TV shows, to in-jokes running wild, the trending topics reflect what is occupying the most people's attention on Twitter at any one time.

Note: You may notice that some topics come with a number sign "#" before the word or phrase. This is called a "hashtag" and was put there specifically to mark it as a topic so that people can follow the conversation in search. Check out this page for more information about hashtags.

Localize

In addition to showing you topics trending worldwide, Twitter can display the most tweeted about topics near you. To change views, click "Set Location" in the sidebar. A pop-up menu will display countries and cities where the tweet volume is such that we can calculate trends for those places.

Note: If you don't see your country or city, it means we're not receiving enough tweets from that geographical area to create a quality list. Locations are not manually decided, but displayed dynamically based on tweet volume.

Observe

Clicking any of these topics in the sidebar (or on the homepage) sends you to the Twitter search results for that topic, so you can see what exactly people are tweeting about it. If you're not sure why a topic is trending, check for a description?they generally show up directly above the first search result when you click through.

You might also notice that the search bar is auto-filled with the query that will return the results you are currently looking at; adding to it will search for something more specific. For instance, clicking on Halloween gets you results for "Halloween OR #Halloween," but if you only want to hear about people dressing up as Batman, you can simply add "Batman" onto the end of the search.

Note: The list of trends changes frequently based on what is most popular right this minute, but that doesn't mean the conversations end. To see what people are saying about a previously trending topic, perform a search for the topic. For example, two weeks after Miley Cyrus quit Twitter, you could still search for the formerly trending "#comebackMiley" and find lonesome fans tweeting to encourage her return.

Participate

Now and then you may notice a topic that particularly grabs your attention. You don't have to do anything special to join the conversation -- just post your tweet on the subject using the exact word or phrase as it appears in the trending topics (with the hashtag, when you see one). Please understand that due to the large number of users tweeting about these specific topics, you may not always be able to find your particular tweet in search -- and that is ok! Your followers will always see your tweets.

Note: Twitter also filters search for quality. To understand what types of behavior could cause you to be filtered, check here.

If you click on a trending topic and notice that it doesn't have a description, what should you do? If you know what the topic is referring to, you can head over to What The Trend and tell us! Since our trend descriptions are sourced from their site, it is possible that all or part of your contribution could show up on Twitter. If you have an opinion, you should tweet it, but if you have Wikipedia-like information that could keep people from flooding search results with, "Why is X trending?" consider contributing!

Note: If you notice a topic that is only trending due to spam, you can report it on What The Trend by clicking Edit and tagging the Category as "SPAM."

Stay Trendy

Besides observing and participating trends, it is also possible to abuse them, but of course, this is against the Twitter Rules. The following behaviors and others like them could cause your account to be filtered from search or even suspended:

Adding one or more topic/hashtag to an unrelated tweet in an attempt to gain attention in search.

Repeatedly tweeting the same topic/hashtag without adding value to the conversation in an attempt to get the topic trending/trending higher.

Tweeting about each trending topic in turn in order to drive traffic to your profile, especially when mixed with advertising.

Listing the trending topics in combination with a request to be followed.

Tweeting about a trending topic and posting a misleading link to something unrelated.

The most important thing is to make sure your tweets are genuine thoughts or impressions and not just attempts to get attention by inserting yourself into a trend. When you click on the trending topics, we would like you to see real people's ideas and links to further relevant information, not spam and people begging for follows.


About Twitter's URL Shortener (http://twt.tl)

Submitted Feb 08 by ginger

Twitter created http://twt.tl as a URL Shortener in order to better protect users from malicious sites. A link created by Twitter's URL Shortener (for example, http://twt.tl/vZDXH7F) can represent a much longer link, and potentially harmful links can be re-routed to a warning page.

Twitter automatically shortens links sent out in Direct Message emails.

Twitter has begun testing http://twt.tl for links included in Direct Message notification emails. Our goal is to make Twitter a safer place by checking links included in Direct Messages to see if they match a database of potential web forgeries ("phishing" sites), sites that download malicious software onto your computer, and spam sites that request personal information.

If a link in a Direct Message is detected as potentially harmful, we'll display a warning screen when you click the link from your email. You should still always use your judgment when clicking links on Twitter or in email notifications, as this service will only protect against known or flagged threats.

You might not see http://twt.tl links in your notification emails.

Twitter is rolling out this feature to all users in stages. Once the feature is fully launched, email clients accepting HTML emails may display the long URL in your email, but clicking on the link should still redirect through the http://twt.tl shortener.

Learn more about how URLs are flagged as potentially harmful.

If the URL of a site you manage has been flagged, please see this help page about flagged URLs for more information.

Submitted Feb 23 by emilypinkerton

Share the love! Add Twitter to your Website or Online Profile! Find out how by using the links below:

Twitter badges and widgets

Using Twitter with Facebook

How to post a link to your Twitter account from your website

How to Connect to Third-Party Applications

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

Twitter Goodies!

Check it out- Twitter has all new widgets to display your tweets, or create a custom widget with tweets of your choosing!

It's like adding a mini version of Twitter to your website, facebook or MySpace page. Twitter is all about sharing information and the new Twitter widgets allow you to do this in even more places!

Adding A Twitter Widget To Your Website

Access widgets from the ?goodies? link in the footer of all Twitter web pages. To add a Twitter widget to your social network, website or blog:

Log into Twitter

Click Goodies at the very bottom of the page

Select ?Widgets?

Select 'My Website'

Select a profile widget (to show your tweets) or a search widget (customized by you!)

Profile widgets display recent tweets from a specific user. Search widgets display highly customizable search results in real time (perfect for live events, conferences, brands etc.).

Adding profile widgets

Profile widgets display the public tweets of anyone on Twitter.
Try entering a few user names to test it out!

Enter the name of the user whose tweets should display in the widget.

Decide whether or not to 'loop old results' (This means, show old tweets if there are no new ones. We recommended this unless you're a 24-7 tweeter.)

Click 'Appearance' to change the colors of your widget (You can enter the numeric color codes to perfectly match your website or blog!)

Click 'Dimensions' to change the size of your widget (You wont be able to preview the size in the widgets page.)

Test your settings to make sure everything looks right

Click ?Finish & Grab Code? at the bottom of the page, and add the code to your website.

Once you've added the widget code to your site, voila!
You've got tweets!

Adding Search Widgets

Customize your Twitter Search Widget using the three left hand tabs on the widget screen: Settings, Appearance and Dimensions.
Note: search widgets will not work on facebook and MySpace.

Fill out the settings for your widget: the 'Search Query' field determines the display of the real-time search results. This can be something as simple as ?San Francisco,? or you can experiment with advanced search queries.

Decide whether or not to 'loop old results' (Recommended only for low volume queries!)

Click 'Appearance' to change the colors of your widget (You can enter the numeric color codes to perfectly match your website or blog!)

Click 'Dimensions' to change the size of your widget (Customize the Width (px) and Height (px) of your widget to fit the area of the page where you want it (minimum size is 150px wide and 100px high). You wont be able to preview the size.)

Test your settings to make sure everything looks right

Click ?Finish & Grab Code? at the bottom of the page, and add the code to your website.

Add the code to your website and display real time tweets!

Adding A Twitter widget to MySpace

Twitter has special widgets just for MySpace.
Display tweets from your Twitter profile on your MySpace page!
To add a Twitter widget to your MySpace:

Log into Twitter

Click Goodies at the very bottom of the page

Select ?Widgets?

Select 'MySpace'

Copy the HTML and add it to your MySpace account

Voila!
Your tweets will post to your MySpace profile in real time.
Note: You can't customize these like the profile and search widgets.

Adding the Twitter application to Facebook

Show your tweets in Facebook!
Each time you tweet, your Facebook friends will see your updates.

To add Twitter's Facebook application:

Log into Twitter

Click Goodies at the very bottom of the page

Select ?Widgets?

Select 'Facebook' and click 'Facebook application

Click 'Install Twitter in Facebook'

You'll be redirected to Facebook, where you'll be asked to sign in and approve the application

That's it-
your tweets will show up for all of your Facebook friends to see.

Advanced Technical Magic!

Want to do more with your Twitter widgets? Do fancy javascript magic and make your widgets super specialized. Check out Twitter engineer Dustin's widget documentation- he built them, and he's telling (almost!) all the secrets.

Sneak preview: the features object

Written by @ded and excerpted here:

So there is a features object that you can pass into your constructor. There are currently four of these features. Albeit mostly self explanatory, they each do this:

hashtags: defaults to true. setting to false will hide them.

timestamp: defaults to true. setting to false will hide them.

avatars: defaults to true for search. and false for profile widget. setting to false will hide them.

fullscreen: (I love this feature!) defaults to false. setting to true will give you a full viewport sized widget, perfect for displaying on large screens at events, conferences, etc.

Overall, these features are pretty great. I especially love the hashtag and fullscreen features since they are perfect for pairing. Let?s say for instance you?re running a conference like SxSW ? you could search for ?#sxsw OR #sxsw09? ? and in the results, hide the hashtags so it doesn?t distract the readability of all the searches. Neat, eh?

Some examples

I went ahead and installed the widget on my own site ? And here?s a few examples:

fullscreen, hidden hashtag search for #iranelection

fullscreen iphone to:apple (hey, we all do it)

Or sometimes you just want to know what Evan Weaver is doing

Check out Dustin's website for examples of his widget magics in action.

Submitted Apr 09, 2009 by crystal

Show your tweets on Facebook

If you want to update your Facebook account with your Twitter updates, install Twitter's Facebook app in your Facebook account

Add the app from Facebook

You can add Twitter's Facebook app while you're logged in to Facebook. You can search for Twitter in the Facebook application directory, but why not just go straight there. Once you're on the app page, click Go to Application. (Note: you may need to log in to Facebook to access some of the FB links in this help article.)

After you've done this, you'll have to allow Twitter to access your Facebook account.

Next, enter your Twitter user name and password into the log in boxes.

Ta da! Now you can update your Twitter account from Facebook. If you want to allow your Twitter account to update your Facebook status, click the link displayed at top; this means everytime you post a tweet, it updates your Facebook status as well.

Facebook will ask you to approve the request, and then you're done!

Add the Facebook app from Twitter

To add the Facebook application from Twitter, visit our widgets page and select the Facebook tab. Click 'Install Facebook in Twitter' and we'll take you over to Facebook to walk you through the above process. You're on your way!

Other fun Facebook/Twitter apps

If you search Facebook's application directory for Twitter, you'll see a few other apps that allow you to do more with Facebook and Twitter.

The Twitter Updater allows you to do the opposite of the Twitter app, and sends a tweet to your Twitter friends whenever you update your Facebook status. For those of you who use Facebook more, but have friends who use Twitter, this is a good way to keep your Twitter friends posted!

If you want to get fancy, you can use the Selective Twitter Status app to control which of your tweets appear in your Facebook status.

Submitted Nov 20, 2009 by Nachtigal

Twitter now has buttons!

Due to popular demand, we've come up with six different-sized buttons for use on your website or blog. If you head on over to http://twitter.com/goodies/buttons you'll see your range of choices, including the option of having the button say "follow me" or "follow us."

To display a button on your website: simply click on the one you want and copy the HTML code that pops up. Then paste it wherever you want in your website's source code. That's it!

What if I've already made my own Twitter button? Can I still use it?

Of course you can! However, it's a good idea to take a peek at this help article and make sure you are complying with our trademark policy:

Submitted Nov 05, 2009 by ginger

Connecting to Third-Party Applications, Programs, Services, and Websites

This is a help page that describes how to connect to external programs or applications that are developed using the Twitter API.

If you?re considering allowing a third-party to update on your behalf or perform other account actions, please be sure you?ve researched the application thoroughly. If you're considering adding automation to your account, you'll also want to review the Twitter Rules and our Automation Rules and Best Practices.

There are two ways to connect to external applications and programs: by establishing an OAuth connection, or by giving the application your Twitter username and password.

Establishing an OAuth Connection:

Establishing a Connection is a way for you to connect to applications without sharing your password. We use an authentication protocol called OAuth and this is the recommended practice for developers wanting to connect their application to your account. OAuth connections are more secure because you won't have to share your password, and you'll be able to change your Twitter password without having to re-enter it in all of your external applications.

Allowing Access:

The website of the application will prompt you to connect using your Twitter account. When you click on their button or link, it will take you to Twitter's authentication screen where you can allow or deny the application:

If you?re not logged in, you?ll be asked to log in to Twitter first. Please always make sure you?re actually on Twitter before filling in your login credentials (the URL of this page will begin with http://twitter.com/):

Once you?ve allowed an application, you?ll be returned to the website of the application or program. You may then take actions in the application or program for as long as you stay logged in to Twitter.

Revoking Access:

You can see all the applications you?re currently connected to in your connections tab (this tab will automatically show up in your account settings once you have an established connection). You can revoke access to an application by visiting your connections tab and clicking ?Revoke Access? for an individual application.

Providing a Third-party with Your Twitter Username and Password:

When you give your username and password to a third-party, they will have access to your account. They can update to your timeline or perform other account actions! Please be careful and research the application or website thoroughly before providing your login credentials. We recommend that all third-party applications connect through OAuth connection, as described above. That said, there are some types of applications that will legitimately need your username and password to function. These include:

Applications you install in order to tweet from your computer desktop

Applications you install in order to tweet from your mobile phone

There are also a few applications that you should never provide with your username and password, such as:

Websites claiming to help you ?get more followers fast!? (see Follow Limits and Best Practices for more information).

Applications for posting affiliate ads to your timeline. These applications must all be OAuth approved and will therefore connect without needing your password (see our Rules for Advertising for more information).

Revoking Access:

Once you?ve given your username and password to a third-party, you cannot revoke access by going through the Connections tab. Instead, you will need to reset your password. Please select a new, strong password you haven?t used before. Be sure to also do this if:

Tweets you didn't create or intend appear on your Twitter profile page as posted by you.

DMs (direct messages) you didn't intend are sent from your account.

You notice your account following or unfollowing users in a manner you did not approve.

Please visit our help page for Compromised Accounts for more information on securing an account that has been compromised or hacked.

If you have any other questions, please file a Support ticket. Thanks!

Submitted Nov 12, 2009 by eddie

Twitter's Tweet With Your Location feature allows you to share your location by displaying the place or coordinates where you're tweeting from. This feature is off by default and you will need to opt-in to use it. You can find out how to start using this feature on the How to Tweet With Your Location help page.

This article is an overview of the Tweet With Your Location feature and has more detailed information on how your location is shown and stored. Twitter's Tweet With Your Location allows users who opt-in to the service to selectively add their location to their Tweets. Tweeting with your place or coordinates can add context to your updates and help you join the local conversation, wherever you are.

Once you've opted-in, you will be able to add your location information to individual Tweets as you compose them on Twitter.com and other applications or mobile devices that support this feature. The location information that is shared publicly can be either your exact location (your coordinates) or your place (like a neighborhood or town). The FAQ below has more information about what may be displayed with your Tweet.

When using Tweet With Your Location, please keep in mind:

Your exact location will be stored with your Tweets, and your exact location or place information may be publicly displayed based on your application settings.

Once you post your location, it?s public. Even if you delete it later, it can remain in third-party applications or other external sources, like search results.
Turning off the Tweet With Your Location feature will opt-out your account from future location sharing, but doesn't remove historical data. You can remove all your location data from your Tweets in your account settings (the How to Tweet With Your Location help page has instructions to do this).

Safe Tweeting With Your Location

It's already a good idea to be cautious and careful about the amount of information you share online. There may be some updates where you want to share your location ("The parade is starting now." or "A truck just spilled delicious candy all over the roadway!"), and some updates where you want to keep your location private. Just like you might not want to tweet your home address, please be cautious in tweeting coordinates you don't want others to see.

Remember that when you're opted in to Tweet With Your Location, you can still select to not share your location for individual Tweets, or choose to share a more general location level if your application allows. Please familiarize yourself with our general location settings and the settings of any applications and devices you tweet with so that you are always aware of the information you share. Remember, once you post something online, it?s out there for others to see.

Tweet With Your Location FAQ

What location information is displayed?

All geolocation information begins as an exact location (latitude and longitude), which is sent from your browser or device. Twitter won't show any location information unless you've opted-in to the feature, and have allowed your device or browser to transmit your coordinates to us. Based on that information, Tweets can be annotated with just that exact location, with a place (a town or neighborhood), or with both types of information.

For each Tweet, we will publicly display whatever location information you've elected to share. For example, if you update from Twitter Mobile and have specified that a particular Tweet should show your exact location, these coordinates can be seen on Twitter.com, Twitter mobile, and in third-party applications.

If you choose to only share your place, those Tweets will only be displayed with the general neighborhood information.
Application developers are required to be up-front and obvious about whether your exact coordinates will be displayed, or just the place. When you tweet from a third-party application or mobile device, it should be clear which type of data will be publicly displayed.

For examples of what this may look like, read on!

Why do I see a pin-pointed exact location for some Tweets but only the general vicinity (neighborhood or city) for others?

Tweets can display the place, exact coordinates, or both. For example, this Tweet only shows a place (the neighborhood SOMA in San Francisco):

If you select your exact location to be displayed, the actual coordinate can be publicly shared. This Tweet has coordinates attached:

What location information does Twitter store?

Similarly to how we store the time stamp that says when the Tweet was made, Twitter stores the location information that is publicly displayed with a Tweet for as long as the Tweet exists (or until you click the ?clear my location history? button on the Settings page as described here).

If you chose to tweet with a place, but not to share your exact coordinates, Twitter still needs to use your coordinates to determine your Place. In order to improve the accuracy of our geolocation systems (for example, the way we define neighborhoods and places), Twitter will temporarily store those coordinates for 6 months.

Which browsers support tweeting with location?

Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome on Windows support tweeting with location. To use this feature on Twitter.com with other browsers (older versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer), you?ll need to download Google Gears.

Submitted Mar 04 by emilypinkerton

If you are not sure what tweeting with your location is, please visit our About Tweet With Your Location help page for more information.

How do I tweet with my location?

Because tweeting with your location is disabled by default for everyone, you must first make sure you have enabled tweeting with location from your Account Settings.

Once you?ve enabled it, applications will be able to tag a tweet with your exact location. You can always disable it and remove all location history from the Settings page, as discussed below.

Using Tweet With Your Location

To tweet with your location on a per-tweet basis after you've enabled Tweet Location, click the crosshair icon that appears below your update box on the lower left.

You will then be asked to let Firefox "Remember Your Location."

Make sure the "Remember for this site" box is checked, and that you click "Share Location."

Your location will then show below the update box.

If you no longer want to tweet with your location on your Tweets, simply click the "x" next to your location. This turns off Tweet WIth Your Location on a per-Tweet basis, meaning your location will not be shown until you re-enable it by clicking the crosshair icon. If you wish to disable Tweet With Your Location entirely, please read the following.

Disabling Tweet With Your Location

If you have already enabled Tweet With Your Location, you can disable it the same way you enabled it - from your Account Settings. Making this change only alters your settings going forward. To remove your location data from all your prior Tweets, you?ll need to follow the steps below.

Removing location data

There are two options for removing location data:

Delete the tweet with the data.

Remove all location data from all of your tweets by clicking the "delete all location data" button on your settings page.

This can take up to 30 minutes, but it will scrub all location information from prior tweets. It is important to note, however, that this does not guarantee the information will be removed from all 3rd-party application?s copies of the data or external search results.

Submitted Jan 21 by emilypinkerton

Twitter Suggestions are lists of engaging and well-liked accounts on Twitter, organized into a variety of common interests. These suggestions are determined algorithmically and refreshed regularly. They represent just a small sample of all of the great users and content available on Twitter, but can be a great place to get started.

How do I find new accounts with Twitter Suggestions?

From the Twitter Suggestions page, click on an interest topic on the left-hand side of your screen and we'll display a list of relevant Twitter accounts. You can pick and choose which accounts you'd like to follow by clicking the follow button next to each user. Then, you can then select a different interest category to find more great accounts to follow.

We show the Twitter Suggestions lists to new users when they sign up, but you can always stop back by! We'll continue to add new categories and suggest interesting, compelling accounts to follow.

How are accounts selected for the Twitter Suggestion Lists?

The accounts shown in each area of interest are selected by an algorithm that looks at factors like rate of Tweets, follower engagement, and type of content. The algorithm finds and suggests interesting and well-liked Twitter users, and accounts are regularly added (and accounts are removed or replaced) as the algorithm finds new, relevant accounts that best engage Twitter users.

Accounts on the Category Lists aren't suggested or selected by staff members, and we don't add or remove individual accounts based on editorial bias or personal preferences. We also have a list of "Staff Picks" with some of the favorite accounts manually suggested by Twitter employees. Employee suggestions to the Staff Picks List are reviewed internally to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

Finally, we also sometimes suggest lists that are manually created by staff for short-term purposes, such as lists relevant to breaking news events (i.e., a list of newsworthy accounts covering Haiti).

How do I communicate with suggested users?

You can communicate with other Twitter users with @replies and Direct Messages. Please keep in mind that these users often have lots of followers and may not be able to respond to every @reply or Direct Message sent to them; try to make your Tweets to them engaging, direct, and to the point. If you don't hear back, it's not personal.

How can I get my account added to a category list?

The accounts found in each interest category are determined by algorithm, and shaped by an account's descriptive information, Tweets, and the people that read those Tweets. Relevancy is key, and the accounts are regularly refreshed. If your user information is complete and accurate, your Tweets are interesting and informative, and you engage with other Twitter users, you'll most assuredly create a strong presence on Twitter. Because category lists are not determined editorially by staff, Twitter employees can't nominate or add individual accounts to interest lists.


Why Can't I Register Certain Usernames?

Submitted Jan 19 by emilypinkerton

Sometimes, if you try to register a certain username you will receive an error message that it is already in use (this also happens if you try to change your username to one that's taken). A few clever users have pointed out that when they visit the URL for the username in question, they find one of the following:

An error message:

Twitter will display the following error message if the username you have entered in the URL is suspended.

If you try to enter that username in your browser's address bar, you will see the following message:

If the account has been deleted by the user, you will see a slightly different error page:

Sometimes when looking up a taken username you will find a page with no recent Tweets or no Tweets at all:

For any of the above cases: can that name be released to me?
Unfortunately, not at this time: Twitter currently releases usernames only in cases of Terms of Service violations, which you may report after viewing our Terms of Service and Rules guidelines. Our help pages for impersonation and trademark policies have additional instructions and information we will need to process your request. We are working on an automatic solution that will release inactive usernames.
In the meantime, hang in there and try to think of other ways to express your Twitter identity! A robust profile and unique, engaging Tweets are a good place to start.


What are @replies and mentions?

Submitted Nov 06, 2008 by crystal

What is an @ Reply?

An @reply is any Twitter update that begins with @username

People say lots of things on Twitter, and sometimes you want to say
something back. In fact, early Twitter folks wanted to talk to each
other so badly that they started using the @+username+message to
designate their message as a reply to another person.

Since people loved using it so much, we made it an official feature. You can start a tweet with @username and it will appear in the person's replies tab. You can also reply directly from someone's tweet: every update has a curved arrow, just click it to and we'll automatically add @username to your next tweet. Now you can send a reply to the author of any tweet just by clicking a button!

What is a mention?

A mention is any Twitter update that contains @username in the body of the tweet.

We noticed people frequently searching for their user name (@username)
to find the tweets that mention their user name anywhere in the tweet, rather than just the beginning. We've decided to make it easier, and include mentions under the replies tab. If you include more than one person in your update and you use the @username format, that person will also see the update in their replies tab.

Both @rk and @yahooza will see Kevin's update in their replies tabs.

How do replies and mentions work?

All tweets containing @username are collected for you, accessible by a link in your sidebar. Click on your user name to see all replies made to you, and mentions of your user name.

Replies and mentions must use the user name in order to appear in the original person's replies tab. All replies and mentions will appear excepting replies from people you've blocked.

Please note:

People will only see replies in their home time line if they are following both the sender and recipient of the update.
People with protected accounts cannot send replies to people who aren't following them, and mentions won't be seen by non-followers either.

Looking for information about direct messages (DMs)? Click here.


How Do I Confirm My Email Address?

Submitted Jan 12 by eddie

Confirming your email address is an easy four step process. For more details on how email confirmation works, or to troubleshoot issues confirming your email address, please check out this article: Confirming Your Email Address

Tutorial

Step One: Visit your account settings and find the ?Email? section. Simply retype the desired email address into the field where the email currently linked to the account displays:

Be sure to click the 'Save' button at the bottom of the page to update your email address.

Step Two: After clicking Save, a popup box will appear asking you to confirm your password. Click on the 'Save changes' button when you are finished.

Step Three: You will be redirected to your settings page, which will reflect an ongoing confirmation process (see the text highlighted in yellow, as shown below.) From here you can cancel this process if you change your mind, or re-send the confirmation email to yourself if you did not receive it.

Step Four: You?ll receive two emails: one to your old email address (if you have access to it) and one to your new email address with the confirmation link. Once you?ve clicked on the confirmation link the new email address is confirmed to your Twitter account, and you're good to go!

Submitted Feb 02 by emilypinkerton

Twitter is more interesting when you follow a robust and diverse group of people, and we want to make it as easy as possible for people to find each other. This page describes some of our tools that make it easy to find friends on Twitter ? and easy for your friends to find you. We call this "Contact Discoverability." While many people want to be as easy to locate as possible, we understand that others value their privacy and anonymity on Twitter, which is why each user has control over how discoverable they are on Twitter. Below we've outlined ways to find friends on Twitter, and we've included guidance on how to set up your account to be as discoverable or as private as you'd like it to be.

Finding Friends on Twitter

To easily populate your Twitter network with your contacts, we've built a tool which helps find friends and colleagues on Twitter. In just a few short clicks, you can populate your Twitter network with the latest updates from the people you want to hear from most.

This tool searches your email address book to find the Twitter accounts belonging to the people you email frequently. It also makes it easy for the people you email to find you on Twitter; if you have "opted in" to be searchable by your email address, friends who have your address in their address book will see your Twitter profile in their own search results.

Privacy Note: this search will only show Twitter profiles belonging to those of your contacts who have agreed to make their email addresses searchable on Twitter. Until a user has explicitly chosen to be found by email address, their corresponding Twitter username will not show up in anyone else's address book searches. Read on to learn more about opting in and opting out of these search features.

Let Your Friends Find You! (Opting In)

In order to be discovered by contacts and friends, users must opt-in to the services mentioned above. Meaning, they must explicitly choose to make their Twitter profile findable via their contact information (otherwise we anonymize the username, as shown above.)

To set your Contact Discoverability settings:

Visit your Settings page by clicking the link on the top right-hand side of your screen

You will automatically be brought into the Account tab, which is where you will set the preferences for email discoverability.

In the Email section of the page, make sure the box to 'Let others find me by my email address' is checked if you want your email contacts to find you.

Click Save at the bottom of the page to save your preferences

Almost done! The next step is to make yourself easy to find for people who know you by your phone number (only available if you have added your phone number to Twitter). To do this:

Visit your Settings page by clicking the link on the top right-hand side of your screen

Click the Mobile tab.

Below your phone number, make sure the box to 'Let others find me by my phone number' box is checked if you want your phone contacts to find you.

Click Save to store your preferences

Maintaining Privacy (Opting Out)

If being found on Twitter by email or phone number would compromise your ability to Tweet freely, simply uncheck the boxes next to your email address and phone number, as shown above. You will not be found in searches based on contact information. You will still be able to perform your own searches and find contacts on Twitter, however.

Other ways to maintain anonymity on Twitter:

1. Do not use your real name in your settings

2. Disable Contact Discoverability, as listed above

3. Avoid listing a personal website in your profile information

4. Choose to "Protect" your profile ? only approved viewers will be able to see your tweets, and you will not show up in any Twitter searches

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

Why does Twitter have limits?

Twitter limits alleviate some of the strain on the invisible part of Twitter, which prevents error pages and down time on the visible part. For the sake of reliability (fewer robots and whales) we've placed limits on actions like following, API requests per hour, and number of updates per day. This doesn't restrain reasonable usage, and will not affect most people.
Although the limits are a recent addition to Twitter, we've always been about limits, starting with 140 characters per update.
We embrace the idea that constraint inspires creativity.

What are the limits?

We're starting with a few limits based on various parameters, and we'll be adding more as time goes on. We reveal some limits only when you reach them, and tell you about others in advance. Twitter currently applies limits to any person who reaches:

1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices (web, mobile web, phone, API, etc. )

250 total direct messages per day, on any and all devices

150 API requests per hour

We've also placed limits on the number of people you can follow. You can learn more on the Follow Limits and Best Practices Page.

What if I hit a limit?

People using multiple API clients at once may see the per hour API request limit, as usual. Most people will not be affected. If you do reach a limit, we'll let you know with a handy error message letting you know which limit you've hit. With the exception of the follow limit, all limits are time based, so you'll be able to try again in 24 hours.
If you have problems with limits, visit our troubleshooting page for more information.

Submitted Nov 08, 2009 by ginger

We?re constantly amazed by the applications and services that grow up around the Twitter platform. External developers have created tools and applications enabling an incredible array of uses; we've seen Twitter accounts that help people stay updated on their city?s emergency services, connect to national health alerts, and catch up on the happenings of their local bridge.

Most users will not need to review this document; however, some people are keen on automation. Unfortunately, spammers have also taken advantage of automation, to the frustration of genuine users. This page has information on what account automations are allowed and which ones could get your account filtered from search or even suspended or terminated.

How Automation Works

In order for an outside party to post to your account or perform other account actions (like following), you have to grant them access by either establishing a Twitter Connection or by giving them your username and password. Please see our help page on Connecting to Third-Party Applications for information on the difference, and how to revoke access for each method.

Ultimately, you are responsible for the updates to your timeline and the actions of your account, which means you shouldn't give control of your account to a third-party unless you've thoroughly investigated the application. If you decide to automate any account actions, you will need to manage your automations carefully to avoid violating the Twitter Rules. Violating these rules may result in account suspension or termination, or your account being filtered from search, regardless of whether you performed the violation manually, or allowed an automation to do so!

Automating your Tweets

Automating Your Tweets Based on an Action You've Completed:

Maybe you want to post to your Twitter timeline whenever you upload a video to YouTube, create a new photo album, or beat a high score in your favorite game? Sounds great! It?s generally fine to update your Twitter account when you complete a particular action. Just be careful?if you post similar updates too frequently, your followers might get a little bored!

Automating Your Tweets by Streaming External Information:

If you want to automate your account with a feed from your personal blog or updates from your RSS feed, please consider the following:

Feeds of your own blog: It?s generally fine to automate your account with updates of your own content; just be sure to review the Twitter Rules before setting up your automation.

Feeds that go through redirects or ad pages: If you're posting automated links that redirect through landing or ad pages before the final content, your account may be suspended for posting misleading links, a violation of the Twitter Rules.

Feeds for community benefit: We welcome feeds that are used for community benefit or provide non-commercial information to a niche group of users, such as local weather feeds or transit information.

Automatically Tweeting to Trending Topics:

Trending topics are the most tweeted-about topics on Twitter. Posting to current trending topics in an automated fashion can degrade the experience for other users, and may result in your account being automatically filtered from search. If this happens, your followers will still see your tweets but you won't show in search results.

Automating your tweets to include references to unrelated trending topics will result in account suspension.

Mass-creating Automated Accounts:

There are legitimate reasons why users may have multiple accounts. Creating serial or bulk accounts with overlapping use, however, is prohibited. Please file a support ticket if you have questions on appropriate use. Include the list of accounts and your planned use of each account; accounts with overlapping use cases are generally not approved.

We have allowed multiple, automated accounts for community benefit. For example, Twitter users can now find out when the Hubble passes overhead, whether they?re in San Francisco or Hong Kong. Users operating serial accounts must maintain them within the Twitter Rules, and violations may result in permanent suspension of all related accounts.

Automated Advertising Updates:

We are continuing to consider the issue of advertising on the Twitter platform. We're committed to encouraging and supporting individuals and businesses who want to discuss and promote the products they care about. At the same time, we?ve also seen an increase in the number of fully-automated, spam accounts promoting affiliate offers. These accounts use automated following, automated @replying, and serial account creation to spam other users with mass-created advertising. These behaviors are all prohibited by the Twitter Rules.

The guidelines in this section are meant to both reduce automated spam on Twitter, and provide guidance for users interested in including advertising for others in their timeline.

Automated or mass-created affiliate advertising is not permitted on Twitter. Updates that are posted automatically to your account through a tool or third-party application, for which you are compensated (whether on a "per-click," "per-sale," "per-tweet," or other basis), are prohibited.

We?re still thinking about the full spectrum of advertising on Twitter; in the meantime, other forms of advertising and promotion are allowed, but subject to the rules in this document. The following forms of advertising are not prohibited:

Promoting your own business or website.
Tweeting unpaid consumer recommendations.

Tweeting sponsored or compensated links and updates that you have manually posted or approved.

Your tweets may be sponsored by a third-party if you manually post or approve each sponsored tweet before it is posted. These updates may not be automated or scheduled in advance. The following rules also apply:

All sponsored or paid updates must be manually approved. You should either manually post these to your account, or individually approve the tweets to be posted to your account.

You shouldn't repeatedly post the same ad updates.

If you're using a third-party tool or application to approve and post your tweets, it must be an application with Twitter OAuth approval. Please see the FAQ below for more information.

You should disclose when you post a compensated or sponsored update.

Users combining advertising with other automations should be particularly careful to review the Twitter Rules and Follow Rules and Best Practices. Account suspensions may be appealed by filing a support ticket.

Finally, please do not attempt to circumvent our guidelines on automated advertising by creating lots of bot accounts that promote similar or duplicate websites (or websites with scraped content); these accounts may be permanently suspended or terminated.

Automating other Account Actions

When you?re automating account behaviors like @replies, DMs, and retweets, we recommend you follow a general guideline: be nice to other Twitter users. In general, we take a skeptical view of disingenuous social action. If your actions are annoying a bunch of Twitter users, you probably will want to rethink or adjust your automation. Here are some more specific guidelines:

Automated @Replies:

The @reply function is intended to make communication between users easier, and automating this process to put unsolicited messages into lots of users? reply tabs is considered an abuse of feature. If you are automatically sending @reply messages to a bunch of users, the recipients must request or approve this action in advance. For example, sending automated @replies based on keyword searches is not permitted.

Users should also have an easy way to opt-out of your service (in addition to the requirement that all users must opt-in before receiving the messages). We review blocks and reports of spam, so you?ll need to provide a clear way for users to stop your messages.

Automated Retweeting of Other Users:

Retweeting someone means you think your followers should see their tweet. When you?re retweeting in an automated fashion, and especially based on an automated search or keyword, this becomes less true.

We discourage the automatic retweeting of other users based on a particular keyword and may suspend or terminate accounts that engage in this behavior, particularly if they are being frequently blocked and reported as spam by the users they are retweeting. If you are rewteeting users just so they will see your update in their replies folder and look at your account, this is akin to @reply spam and your account may be suspended or terminated.

Automated Following and Un-Following:

Twitter users often review the profiles and recent tweets of their new followers. Being followed in a bulk, automated fashion can make this process bothersome and makes Twitter a less fun place to hang out.

The only auto-following behavior Twitter allows is auto-follow-back (following a user after they have followed you). Automated un-following is also not permitted. If you find yourself frequently needing to un-follow large numbers of users, you might consider reviewing your criteria for following them. Please review our Follow Rules and Best Practices for a detailed discussion of following recommendations.

Also note that in the general Twitter Rules that "get followers fast" applications and services are not allowed. Do not surrender your username and password to them.

Automating Your DMs (Direct Messages):

Including an automated ?thanks for following? message to your new followers might be annoying to some users. We do not recommend, but generally do not regulate, this behavior; if you receive a DM you don?t like, you can un-follow that user and they will no longer be able to send you messages.

Automation that Causes Your Account to Violate the Twitter Rules:

If your account automation is causing your account to violate the Twitter Rules (by retweeting spam updates, repeatedly posting duplicate links, etc.), your account may be suspended or terminated. You are responsible for the updates on your account, so please do not add automations unless you are confident you will be able to manage your account within the rules.

Other Questions (FAQ)

What is an application with Twitter OAuth approval?

As discussed above, you may post manually-approved, compensated tweets through a third-party application with Twitter OAuth approval. If an application has OAuth approval, the following will be true

You allow the application access by approving their connection, not by giving out your username and password.
Once approved, you?ll be able to see and revoke the connection from your connections tab.

When tweets come from a third-party application, the name of the source is included to the right of the time-stamp, like this:

Updates posted using the general API without Twitter OAuth will instead say "from API? as the source. We do not allow advertising posted through general API applications. If you find your account posting ads such as these, please change your password and revoke unwanted connections. You can find more information, and a technical walk-through for allowing and revoking API access, the help page on Connecting to Third-Party Applications.

Submitted Sep 29, 2009 by ginger

Spam on Twitter is annoying, and we?re constantly working to improve our ability to find and remove it. Clicking on one of the ?report for spam? links:

Alerts us that the account is a possible spam account, and

Blocks the account from following you or replying to you

This action doesn?t immediately or definitely cause an account to be suspended, but it?s an important tool we use to identify and investigate spam accounts.

What is spam?

?Spamming? can describe a variety of different behaviors. Here are some common tactics that spam accounts often use:

Posting harmful links (including links to phishing or malware sites)

Abusing the @reply function to post unwanted messages to users

Creating lots of accounts or using automated tools to create multiple accounts

Spamming trending topics to try to grab attention

Repeatedly posting duplicate updates

Posting links with unrelated tweets

Aggressive following behavior (for instance, mass following and un-following in order to gain attention)

Behaviors that constitute ?spamming? will continue to evolve as we respond to new tactics by spammers. You can find a more comprehensive list of spam behavior in the Twitter Rules.

How do I report spam?

When you're logged in to your Twitter account, you can report a user as spam directly from their profile page. Look for the ?report for spam? link in the Actions section of the user?s right sidebar. You can also find this link in the drop-down Actions menu.

When you click on this link, you?ll see a pop-up message asking you to confirm your report. Hit "OK" and you're done. We?ll also block the user from following you or from replying to you.

(Note: If you want to block a user, but not report them as spam, you can find out how on the Blocking Users help page. This page also shows you how to unblock an account if you?ve changed your mind).

What happens when I report an account as spam?

Twitter?s Trust and Safety Team looks at user reports of spam in combination with other signals for spam investigation. You may not immediately or definitely see this account suspended. Once you?ve reported an account as spam, it is no longer able to follow you or reply to you.

Other Questions?

Using the ?Report as Spam? links is the best ways to alert us to spam accounts, but we also have help resources for other specific violations of the Twitter Rules and Terms of Service:

To report child pornography, please see our Help Page on Child Pornography.

For other Terms of Service violations, you can visit the help pages for Trademark Policy, Privacy Violations, or Harassment and Violent Threats.

If your account has been sending strange updates and you think it might have been compromised (or hacked), please visit our Help Page for Compromised Accounts!

Twitter?s general support and help pages are here.

Thanks!

Twitter is more interesting when you can share what's happening and especially when you can hear what's happening from the people you care about. We can check address books from Gmail, Yahoo!, and AOL to see if any of your contacts are currently using Twitter. We'll show you who is on Twitter and you can choose to follow them if you want to get their Tweets.

To import an address book, visit the Find People link at the top of your screen and click the "Find Friends" tab, shown below. If you are registered with a Gmail, Yahoo! or AOL address, your email should be pre-filled and the right tab selected. If you are not, but have an email address with one of those services, select that tab, type in your email and password to begin the contact import.
Note: Twitter doesn't save your email log in information, we only use it once to get permission to view your contacts list.

Once the search is complete, you can choose to follow all users using the blue 'Follow All' button, or to follow users individually by clicking the grey 'Follow' button to the right of their name and user information.

When the scan is complete, Twitter will show you a list of the friends and colleagues it found in your address book. You can choose to follow all of them by selecting the blue 'Follow All' button on the right hand side of the results, or if you'd like to see updates only from specific people, you can choose to follow your email contacts individually using the grey 'follow' button next to their information.
Please note that if you click "Follow all", you can still manually unfollow people on this screen or at any time in the future.

Once you have selected the friends and colleagues you wish to follow, a confirmation message will appear.

At this point, you're done! You can navigate back to your Home timeline to view posts from your friends and colleagues, or select the invite by email option if you wish to follow friends who are not yet on Twitter.

Submitted Nov 06, 2008 by crystal

Find your friends and make some new ones

Twitter is more fun with friends. Now that you're twittering, find new friends or follow people you already know to get their twitter updates too. You can find your friends using people search, Twitter search, address book import, or URL look up.

Note: Did you know that you can navigate directly to a user's profile if you know their username? Simply enter the URL http://twitter.com/username in your browser, replacing 'username' with the username of the account you would like to visit.

Find People by name

Use Twitter's people search to find people who currently use Twitter.
Search for a first, last, or user name as a starting point, and see what comes up. We use the full name as well as the user name fields to give you as many relevant results as possible.

To use people search, click on the 'Find People' link in the top navigation bar, and select the 'Find on Twitter' tab. If you don't find who you're looking for, dig deeper using some of the options suggested in the sidebar.

Find people using keywords, location, interests, and more!

Twitter Search is an incredible tool that allows you to find virtually anything and anyone by adding the ability to search for key words, locations, phrases, and more!
Type in any word and you're guaranteed to get real time results.

Want to know what people think of a new movie?
Try searching for it.

Search for any phrase ('I dreamt' is an interesting one)

Want to know what people are saying about your company? Try a keyword search.

Wondering who sends tweets from your area? Try searching for 'location:cityname' to see a list of people who are from that city.

The results you get from Twitter show what people are saying and doing right now!

You can translate foreign language updates into English, filter by language, post a Twitter update linking to interesting search results, and even subscribe to search results (this is like tracking keywords, but on the web!)

We also keep track of the most popular topics, called "trending topics"
so you'll always know what people are excited about.

But that's not all: check out Advanced Search to do some truly amazing things, like find people within 15 miles of a given location, find updates by positive or negative connotation, find updates to a certain person or from a certain person, or even updates within a specified time period. For more information about advanced search operators, click here.

Find Friends and Colleagues on Other Networks

Still haven't found what you're looking for? Twitter has built a tool to help you find friends and colleagues on other networks with a quick check of your email address book. It's a fast, simple way to find more friends to follow.


Why does Twitter store my email contacts?

Submitted Oct 02, 2009 by crystal

Why store contacts?

People often ask for better ways to find their friends on Twitter- storing contacts allows us to work on cool new features like alerting you when someone from your contacts list signs up, recommending you to your contacts who are also using Twitter, and more! This is totally optional-- just click "skip this step" if you'd rather us not store your contacts list.

Can others access my contacts?

No. In fact, you wont be able to access them either; Twitter wont display your contacts list anywhere on the site. We'll only use it when developing new features that will help you find people you know. Since we're still in the experimental stages, you wont notice any difference in your Twitter account today, but the good news is, if you've allowed us to store your contacts, you'll be the first to use the new features when they're available.

You might ask yourself...

Does Twitter store the user name and password for my contacts list?

Of course not-- Twitter doesn't store passwords anywhere in the system.

Is my contact list shared?

Never!

Can I add my contacts later if I refuse at first?

Yes, just come back to FInd People/find on other networks.

If I allow Twitter to store my contacts, can I later delete them?

Not yet, but soon!


What are favorites?

Submitted Nov 11, 2008 by crystal

Thank Your Lucky Stars

Some twitter updates are just too good to be forgotten. When you stumble upon such a gem, mark it as a favorite by hovering over the update and clicking the yellow star that pops up at the end.

If you're logged in, you can mark any update as a favorite from:

your home timeline

a person's profile page

an update's static page

your phone (reply to Twitter with a text saying 'fav username.' For example, fav jack)

Note: when you mark an update from a protected person as a favorite, you will always see it (if logged in) when viewing your favorites page.
However, if you favorite updates from folks with protected profiles, the update will not appear in the favorites tab on your profile page unless the viewer is an approved follower of the update's author.
For example, if I follow Jeremy and his profile is protected, when I favorite one of his updates, my follower John will not see it in my favorites when he visits my favorites tab on my profile page unless he, too, is an approved follower of Jeremy.

Visit your favorites page by visiting the tab in the right hand sidebar of your logged-in home page, and check out the favorites tab on others' profile pages to see what they liked best.
If you need to remove a favorite, click the star again and it will go hollow, and be removed from your favorites list.

Submitted Nov 05, 2009 by ginger

Safe Tweeting: The Basics

We want Twitter to be a safe and open community. This help page provides some information and tips to help you practice safe Tweeting and keep your account secure. Here are some basics:

Use a strong password.

Watch out for suspicious links, and always make sure you?re on Twitter.com before you enter your login information.

Don't give your username and password out to untrusted third-parties, especially those promising to get you followers or make you money.
Make sure your computer and operating system is up-to-date with the most recent patches, upgrades, and anti-virus software.

We're working to improve our responses to security threats, but user accounts and computers can sometimes become compromised by phishing, hacks, or viruses. If you think your account has been compromised, please visit our help page for compromised accounts to find out how to fix it quickly!

You can help protect your account by following some easy precautions, discussed below.

Use a Strong and Unique Password

When you set up your account, be sure to choose a strong password (a hard-to-guess password that?s a mix of numbers and letters). It's also a good idea to use a unique password for each website you use; that way, if one account gets compromised, the rest are safe. For more info on selecting a secure password, check out these password tips from Google.

Also, please use a secure and private email address to associate with your Twitter account. If you forget your password, you'll be able to get instructions for resetting it emailed to that address.

Always Check that You're at Twitter.com Before Logging In

Phishing is when someone tries to trick you into giving up your username and password, usually so they can send out spam to all your followers from your account. Often, they?ll try to trick you with a link that goes to a fake login page.

Be wary of weird links in DMs: Be cautious when clicking on odd links in DMs. Even if the link came from a friend, it's possible that their account was compromised and the URL was actually sent out by a spammer.

Make sure you're on Twitter.com before logging in: Whenever you are prompted to enter your Twitter password, just take a quick look at the URL and make sure you're actually on Twitter.com.

You can find the URL in the address bar of your browser. Twitter domains will always have the http://twitter.com/ as the base domain. Here are some examples of Twitter login pages:

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

Account Restoration is Not Available at This Time

Here is what you saw before deactivating your account:

Information from your deactivated account (username and email address) will be unavailable to use on a new account until we release our new account restoration process.

Twitter wants everyone to practice safe behavior and to feel secure while using our service. Here are some tips and resources to help you protect your private information, and prevent cyberbullying and cyberharassment on Twitter.

Don't Share Personal Information

Please be cautious when giving out your information online, especially your private address, location, credit card number, or telephone number. Remember, what you Tweet is public and can be seen by anyone. If you want your Tweets to only be available to approved followers you can set your account to protected. Please keep in mind that any Tweets posted when your account is public will remain public.

People are not always who they claim to be on their Twitter profile and you should be wary of any communication that asks for your private contact information, personal information, or passwords. Don't participate in any sites that offer some sort of prize or money in exchange for your personal information. Twitter will never direct message you or @reply you asking for your password or personal information; you'll only ever be requested to enter your password and email/username on a http://twitter.com/ log in page (see our Safe Tweeting help page for more information about avoiding phishing).

If another user is sharing your personal information online, you find out how to report it on our Privacy Violations help page.

Prevent Cyberbullying and Cyberharassment

End Communication and Block Bullies

If you are receiving unwanted communications from a bully, we generally recommend that you block the user and end any communication. Blocking prevents the user from following you or replying to you, and can minimize any incentives to persist in their conduct. This help page on blocking shows you how to block other users. Twitter believes that cyberharassment is a serious issue and we have provided all users with the ability to block other users.

Please don't strike back at the harasser or become a bully yourself; often, all the bully wants is to get a reaction from you, and letting them know you're upset may just escalate the situation. If you ever feel that you are in physical danger, please contact your local police department immediately.

Tell Others: Seek Help From Parents, School, and Local Officials

Bullying is often against local or school rules. If appropriate, we recommend that you report bullying to local officials or other parents. Involvement of parents and local authorities can be a very effective method of ending harassment and bullying.

Don't be a bully, be a friend

You may encounter people on Twitter who you don't like or who say things that you disagree with or find offensive. Please remain courteous, even if the other people are not. Retaliation can reinforce bad behavior and only encourages bullies. Don't forward or retweet bullying or mean messages. Remember that the things you say can be very hurtful to other people. Don't turn into a bully yourself.

More Resources for Parents and Cyberbullying

There are lots of great online resources with more information on parenting and cyberbullying:

Submitted Feb 25 by ls

What language do you speak? Your Twitter profile would like to know! Twitter's website is now live in six different languages: Italian, Spanish, English, French, German, and Japanese. Changing your language preferences is easy and can be done at any time. Follow the steps below to change your language settings:

1. Log in and click on the "Settings" tab

2. Choose your language from the "Language" drop-down menu on your Account Settings page

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save"

4. Enter your password when prompted and click "Save Changes" to complete

Submitted Oct 14, 2009 by ginger

Businesses, organizations, and even some swanky individuals have hosted contests through their Twitter profile. Contests on Twitter may offer prizes for tweeting a particular update, for following a particular user, or for posting updates with a specific hashtag.

Maybe you?ve been thinking about hosting a contest using your Twitter profile? You probably also want to make sure your contest doesn't ask anyone to violate any of Twitter's rules or guidelines.

Great! Here are some simple guidelines for running contests on Twitter:

Discourage the creation of multiple accounts: If users make lots of accounts in order to enter a contest more than once, they?re liable to get all of their accounts suspended. Please be sure to include a rule stating that anyone found to use multiple accounts to enter will be ineligible.

Discourage posting the same tweet over and over (and over) again: Posting duplicate, or near duplicate, updates or links is a violation of the Twitter Rules and jeopardizes search quality. Please don?t set rules to encourage lots of duplicate updates (like saying, ?whoever retweets this the most wins?). Your contest could cause users to be automatically filtered out of Twitter search. Plus, instead of their followers seeing your cool contest, their followers might start getting annoyed by your contest. You might want to set a clear contest rule stating that multiple entries in a single day will not be accepted.

Ask users to include an @reply to you in their update so you can see all the entries: When it comes to picking a winner, you?ll want to see all the contestants. If the updates include @username mention to you, you?ll be able to see all the updates in your Mentions timeline (see here for more information on replies and mentions). Just doing a public search may not show every single update, and some contestants may be filtered from search for quality.

Encourage the use of topics relevant to the contest: You might decide to have users include relevant hashtag topics along with the updates (like #contest or #yourcompanyname). Keep in mind that hashtag topics need to be relevant to the update; encouraging users to add your hashtag to totally unrelated updates might cause them to violate the Twitter Rules.

These guidelines should help keep your contest entrants in good standing. In general, make sure you review both the Twitter Rules and our search best practices before starting your contest. If you?re a business on Twitter, you might also want to check out the Twitter 101 for Business guide for more information and tips.

Thanks!

Submitted Nov 18, 2009 by ginger

Each tweet on Twitter has a unique URL. You can use this link to navigate directly to the Tweet. These direct status links make it easier to share individual Tweets by email or IM.

Here's how to find a Tweet's URL:

1. Find the Tweet: While on Twitter.com, locate the Tweet. You might find the Tweet in the profile page of the user that posted it, or amongst all the Tweets in your timeline.

2. Click on the Tweet's timestamp: Below each Tweet, you'll find some additional information about the Tweet, like when it was posted and the source (for example, "from web" means that the Tweet was posted from Twitter.com).

The time and date of the Tweet is called the timestamp. If you hover your cursor over the timestamp, you'll notice that it's a link. Click on it!

3. Find the status URL: When you click on a Tweet's timestamp, you'll be taken to the status page of the Tweet. If you look at the URL of your web browser, you'll see the exact status link, which you can copy and paste to share with others. For example, the status link of this Tweet by Eddie is http://twitter.com/eddie/status/6470759349.

Now, you can share the status link whenever you want to share or reference an individual Tweet!

Submitted Feb 23 by emilypinkerton

If you are having trouble with a mobile device, check out our Mobile section - it's full of answers to common questions and updates regarding known issues with service providers.

Submitted Nov 06, 2008 by crystal

Using Twitter via SMS

Twitter
is a new kind of technology that uses multiple methods of communication
to help keep you in touch with people and information you care about.
Using Twitter with your phone will change the feel of Twitter for you.
Not only can you receive Tweets via SMS when people you've specified
update, you can also send updates to Twitter while you're on the go.
These are some of the most frequently asked questions about using
Twitter via SMS.

Text Messages?
Sounds expensive.
How much will Twitter cost me?

Twitter
charges you nothing, but how much it costs to use Twitter with text
messaging depends on your text messaging plan.
Standard text messaging
rates (such as international text messaging fees) do apply.
Consult
your service provider to ensure that your text plan covers your Twitter
usage. If you're using our international numbers, give your provider
the Twitter phone number you'll be using to see if you'll incur extra
charges.
If you're using Twitter from outside of the US, please
consult your carrier, as every provider has a different policy.

When I give you my number, you wont charge my phone bill?

No.
Twitter doesn't charge your phone bill.
Sending and receiving
messages to Twitter is like sending to a regular number.
Usage charges
for text messaging are applied by your carrier and depend on your SMS
plan. Some people pay a per-message charge of ten cents or more.
Some
people have an allotted number of text messages monthly.
Some (lucky!)
people have unlimited text plans. We must caution: Twitter can become
highly addictive, so make sure that your texting habits and your text
plan are compatible.

How does Twitter use my phone number?

Think
of Twitter as a single contact who sends all of the messages from your
friends.
Twitter uses your number to send web updates to your phone in
text message format.
Your number is private; Twitter never reveals
phone number information.

What are the Twitter short codes?

We currently support 2-way (sending and receiving) Twitter SMS via short codes and 1-way (sending only) via long codes.

Short codes for 2-way Twitter SMS:

US: 40404
Australia: 0198089488 (Telstra customers)
Canada: 21212
India: 53000 (Bharti Airtel customers)
Indonesia: 89887 (AXIS and 3 customers)
Ireland: 51210 (O2 customers)
New Zealand: 8987 (Vodafone and Telecom NZ customers)
UK: 86444 (Vodafone, Orange, 3 and O2 customers)

1-way long codes:
Germany: +49 17 6888 50505
Sweden: +46 737 494222
All other countries: +44 762 4801423

*Note:
if you send messages to a number other than the one listed in your
settings page, the message will be dropped. For all people using
international numbers: once your phone is verified, you'll be able to
send your updates to Twitter, but you will not be able to receive text
updates from Twitter.
Find out more on the Twitter Blog.

What is a short code?

Short
codes are numbers made specifically for SMS (text) messages. Twitter
uses various short codes to send and receive your updates.
Sending a
text message to a short code is just like sending a text message to a
phone number. Short codes are made specifically for text messaging, so
you can't send an email to a short code, or call a short code.
Charges
for using our short codes are the same as standard text messaging rates
to full-length phone numbers. Long codes are also text only, but
they're the length of a standard phone number instead of being
shortened.

How do I add my phone to Twitter?

You
can add your phone by sending ?start? to one of the Twitter short codes
if your country and carrier are supported. Find out more about it here.

Can I use the same phone number on multiple accounts, or have multiple phone numbers for the same account?

No.
You can only use one phone number for one account.

How long can my updates be?

We
have a 140 character limit on Twitter updates.
If your update is
longer than that, the full update will post to the web where it can be
viewed in its entirety.
We'll still send the truncated version: only
the first 140 characters will go to phones.

How do I send direct messages from my phone?

Send a direct message to anyone on Twitter using the direct message command, d + username, like this:

d krissy message goes here

Make
sure to use the user name (found in the profile URL) and not the real
name, or it will post to the public timeline, or go to someone else!

Can I update Twitter from my phone but not receive other people's updates?

Yes.
As long as you've verified your phone,
you can send updates to Twitter even if all notifications are off.
Make sure to set your updates to OFF on the web, or send OFF from your
phone.
People using +44 7624 801423 will always be able to send
messages, but will not be able to receive them.

Can I turn updates on for some people and off for others?

Yes. Set up text preferences for people you follow from the drop down 'following' box on the profile page.

How do I turn a specific person's updates on or off from my phone?

To get a person's tweets on your phone, use the commands FOLLOW or ON + username, like this:

follow caroline

on caroline

To turn tweets off again, send LEAVE or OFF + username, like this.

leave crystal

off crystal

You can change notification preferences from the profile pages of everyone you follow.

How do I turn ALL twitter messages off or on from my phone?

To
stop getting Twitter updates, send OFF, STOP, or QUIT from your phone
at anytime.
We will send you a final message confirming that your
phone notifications are off.
Sending ON will turn them back on.

Is there a setting for receiving only @replies on my phone?

Nope. But if we get enough feature requests, we may just add it for you. Send us one!

Is there a setting for receiving only direct messages on my phone?

Yep! You can set this up in your mobile settings page.
When you send OFF once, Twitter messages will turn off but direct
messages will be on.
When you send OFF twice, everything will be off.
You can also set up email preferences for direct message notifications.

If I turn Twitter off, will I still get Direct Messages?

Yes.
You will receive direct messages if you send OFF only once; to disable
direct messages, send OFF twice or change the settings in the mobile settings page.
You will always receive a copy of your message on your web archive,
and in your email if you set it up in your preferences.

Can I favorite updates from my phone?

Yes. If you receive an update that you'd like to mark as favorite, reply to the update with FAV + username, like this: fav delbius

I'm getting a lot of updates.
How can I get fewer?

Stop
getting updates from some friends without stopping all updates from all
friends.
The easiest way to do this is to change text preferences on
the web from the person's profile page.
You can also use the leave or
OFF command.
Text OFF + username or LEAVE + username to stop getting
messages from a specific person, like this: leave bs

Make
sure you're using the username, and not just the screen name.
(Find
the user name by going to the person's profile and looking in the URL
at top.)

Submitted Nov 06, 2008 by crystal

The Official Twitter Commands

Did you know: you can perform certain actions, like following or marking a friend's update as a favorite, by using the designated Twitter commands? Use the commands listed below from your phone, the web update box, or your favorite third party application.

Please note : When using these commands make sure that you do not append an @ along with it.

For example, if you want to turn on device notifications send only ON and not @ON.

Similarly, if you want to stop getting updates from Twitter send STOP and not @STOP.

If you send these commands with an @, it will be considered as an username and will not be executed as expected!

Read on to know more Twitter commands..

Turning Twitter off and on: device notifications

ON: turns ALL phone notifications on.

OFF, STOP, QUIT, End, Cancel, Arret or Unsubscribe: turns ALL phone notifications off.
ON username: turns on notifications for a specific person on your phone. For example, ON alissa.
OFF username: turns off notifications for a specific person on your phone. For example, OFF blaine.
FOLLOW username: this command allows you to start following a specific user, as well as receive SMS notifications. Example: follow jermy

LEAVE username: this command allows you to stop following a specific user, as well as stop receiving SMS notifications. Example: leave benfu

Fun Stuff: friends, favorites, and stats!

There's more to Twitter than OFF and ON! Use the commands below to send private messages, mark updates as favorites, or even remind someone to update their Twitter page if you're wondering what they're doing!

@username + message
directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their "replies" tab.
Example: @meangrape I love that song too!

RT username
Retweet's a users latest Tweet

D username + message
sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.
Example: d krissy want to pick a Jamba Juice for me while you're there?

FAV username

marks a person's last twitter as a favorite and causes the message to show up in your "Favorites" tab.

SET LOCATION placename

updates the location field in your profile

Example: set location san francisco

WHOIS username retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.
Example: whois jack

GET username
retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.
Example: get goldman

FAV username
marks a person's last twitter as a favorite. (hint: reply to any update with FAV to mark it as a favorite if you're receiving it in real time)
Example: fav al3x

STATS
this command returns your number of followers, how many people you're following, and your bio information.

INVITE phone number
will send an SMS invite to a friend's mobile phone.
Example: Invite 415 555 1212

Noteworthy Facts

using on/off username from your phone only stops notifications to the place the command comes from; you'll still collect a person's updates on the web.

using follow/leave username from your phone is the same as using on/off username.

following someone from a phone for the first time will also cause you to follow them on the web.

there is no way to stop following a person on the web without visiting their profile and removing them. The off, leave, stop, and quit commands will only disable updates for the device(s) from which they were sent.

you don't have to use on/off username from the phone, you can also set individual notifcations from a person's profile page, or check your following page and manage all phone notification settings there.

Questions? Ask us!


How To Set Up Twitter On Your Phone (via SMS)

Submitted Nov 17, 2008 by crystal

Add your phone from...your phone!

Did you know: you can send tweets by text? Adding your phone to Twitter makes it easy to tweet from places where even wifi and mobile web don't work! Send a text to your Twitter code with the word START, then we'll reply and ask you to sign up if you're new, or reply with your user name if you already have an account.

If you have an account, just reply with your username. Then, we'll ask you to verify your password, and if it's correct, we'll post your first tweet and let you know! (If you don't get a confirmation text right away, just check your profile page on the web to see if your tweet showed up.)

If you don't have an account, just reply with SIGN UP. We'll ask you to choose a user name, and once we receive it, we'll ask for your first tweet!

When you send your tweet, we'll post it to your profile on the web. You can then access that profile by entering your phone number to log in at www.twitter.com. ;

Get started by sending a text to any of these Twitter numbers:

US: 40404
Australia: 0198089488 (Telstra customers)
Canada: 21212
UK: 86444 (Vodafone, Orange, 3 and O2 customers)
India: 53000 (Bharti Airtel customers)
Indonesia: 89887 (AXIS and 3 customers)
Ireland: 51210 (O2 customers)
New Zealand: 8987 (Vodafone and Telecom NZ customers)

1-way long codes:
Germany: +49 17 6888 50505
Sweden: +46 737 494222
All other countries: +44 762 4801423

Note: these numbers are for text only; you cannot call them. Folks using international numbers: once your phone is verified, you'll be able to send but not receive updates from Twitter. Find out more on the Twitter Blog.

For UK residents: some carriers don't charge an international fee to send messages to the Twitter number within the UK, but other carriers do. T-Mobile, for example, considers +44 762 4801423 an international number and charge rates varying from .15 to .25 or more per message, even if you are using a carrier within the UK. Remember to check your phone plan for international rates; be aware that even in the UK, standard messaging rates vary by carrier, and do apply. If you're having trouble adding your phone number, check out our phone troubleshooting page.

Turning on Text Tweets for People You Follow

To get tweets from others whom you are following, visit the profile pages of people you follow, or your following page, and look for the mobile icon. Hover over it to see if mobile tweets are on (it will be green if they are); click the icon to turn them off or on. You must follow someone first before you can get their updates on your phone.

But that's not all: you can also send "ON+username" to Twitter, like so:

ON tw33tastic

If you want to turn on tweets by text command for people you are not already following, you'll need to send "FOLLOW + username" before sending "ON + username", like so:

FOLLOW tw333tastic

Check out these other phone commands for more tips and tricks!


How To Turn Phone Updates On and Off (via Web or SMS)

Submitted Dec 03, 2008 by crystal

Get Tweets on Your Phone!

You can keep yourself updated on what people are saying on Twitter using your phone! To get others' tweets delivered to your phone, you'll need to turn mobile notifications ON for the people you are following and whose tweets you want to receive on your phone. You can turn updates ON in two ways:

A) Via Web

B) Via Phone

How to Turn Mobile Notifications On Via Web

You can turn ON the device updates of a Twitter user and get the updates on your phone by few simple steps:

Visit the user's Twitter profile page. (HInt: Typing the URL twitter.com/username will open up the users profile page for you).

You can see a small mobile icon just below the users profile image, on the top left corner.

Clicking on the icon will turn ON the device updates for that user and
you will receive his updates every time he tweets, on your phone! (green means on, gray means off)

If you do not want to receive further updates from the user, click on the phone icon again and the users tweets will not be delivered to your phone. The updates will be turned OFF.

You can also turn ON a users update by visiting your following page. Look for the small, cute mobile icon next to the user's name, hovering over it you will know if the device updates are ON/OFF. Click on the icon to turn them ON or OFF.

If an account is protected, the owner will have approve your follow request before you'll receive their tweets.

How to Turn Mobile Notifications On Via Phone

Easy! Send 'ON + username' or 'FOLLOW + username' from your device to your Twitter code and we will send the tweets across to your phone. Example : ON crystal or FOLLOW charles.

Make sure however your device is added first! These commands will work only then.

You can turn OFF the updates if you are no longer interested to see them on your device. Send 'OFF username'.
You will however still continue to receive updates of the user on your web account .

Find out more about our Twitter text commands here.

Setting Text Preferences for People You Follow

Via SMS/text message

First, make sure your phone is added to your account. Then, send 'ON username' or 'FOLLOW username' from your device to us and we will send the tweets across to your phone. Example : ON crystal or FOLLOW charles

You can stop getting their updates via text message by sending 'LEAVE username', or 'OFF username,' from your phone, like so:

off charles
leave charles

Even if you stop getting someone's updates via SMS/text message, you'll still see their updates on the web.
Before you unfollow a person, remember that you don't have to stop following people who reply too much or send too many updates for your text plan.
You can change your device settings per person if you don't want to receive text updates from everyone.

Mobile web

If you have a mobile web browser, navigate to m.twitter.com and follow the web instructions above to turn on text preferences for people you follow.
If you need to use the full featured site, just view Twitter in Standard view.

Thanks,
Twitter Support

Submitted Sep 24, 2009 by crystal

No Twitter account? No problem!

Are you a NEW Twitter user and want to start sending tweets from phone? Its easy! Just send 'START' to Twitter from your phone: we'll ask you to choose a name and... Voila! You're ready to tweet. (If you're in the US, send START to our short code, 40404. If you're somewhere else, check out this Twitter phone number listing to see which one you should use.)

Choosing a name

When you send us a text, we'll ask you for a username. This is the name people will use to send you replies and messages. If you choose to hook your account to Twitter on the web, this name will be in your profile URL. Shorter names are better, as they take up fewer characters. Make sure that you select a username that is less than or equal to 15 characters in length, with no spaces or special characters (underscores are the exception).

If the username is taken, we'll give you three attempts to select a unique one (try your luck!). If you're out of ideas, Twitter will suggest an alternative username. If you want a new one later, it's easy to visit Twitter.com and change your username from the web settings.

Accessing your web profile

If you've been using Twitter from the phone, it's easy to setup your web login. Just enter your phone number, and a verification code will be sent to your phone. Enter the code on the web, and hooray, you're in!

But I have a Twitter account. How do I start sending tweets by text?

Easy: visit your phone setting page on the web to add your phone. Or, just send a tweet to 40404, or if you're outside the US, find the right number here. Before we can post your tweet, we'll verify your identity by asking for your username and password. Once we receive them, we'll post your tweet and you're ready to go! Send us a tweet by text anytime! Find out more things you can do from your phone!

Submitted Jan 13, 2009 by crystal

I joined Twitter from my phone; how do I access my web account?

Once upon a time, Twitter offered mobile sign up. Although we no longer offer it, there are still lots of accounts that were created from mobile phones that have yet to be linked to their web account.
When you join Twitter from your phone, we collect all of your updates on the web. When you're ready to claim your web account, you have to add an email address and a password in order to access the account. We already have your phone number, but we need you to prove that you're you. You'll be able to complete web sign up from the link on the home page.

Or you can just visit this page. Just enter your phone number, follow the instructions on the next page, and voila! You're in!
All of the Twitter updates you've sent from your phone will appear in your profile. If you already have a web account but your phone or instant message address isn't added yet, visit device settings to start getting Twitter updates on the go.

Did you create an extra mobile account by accident? Check out our trouble shooting page to find out what to do.

Submitted Nov 23, 2009 by keerthi

If you want to delete the number associated with your Twitter account because:

you recently changed your mobile number and your account has your old number linked with it

you no longer want to use Twitter via phone

you want to link your phone to another Twitter account

then follow the instructions below:

1) Log in to your Twitter account.

2) Click on 'Settings'

3) Click on the 'Mobile' tab.

4) If your phone is added with your account you will see a 'Delete and Start Over' button under the Mobile tab, as shown below:

5) Click on the 'Delete and Start Over' button and the number will be deleted from your Twitter account.

After you delete your number from the account, the Mobile tab will the show the process to associate your phone to your account via web:

You will now no longer receive any updates from Twitter on your phone.

You can add your phone again at any time. You can find more information on how to add your phone with Twitter here.

Thanks,

Twitter Support Team.


How To Find Your Twitter Phone Number (Short and Long Codes)

Submitted Nov 11, 2008 by crystal

Send Twitter updates by text message

If you add your phone to Twitter, you can update anywhere, anytime by simply sending us a text message! Once your phone is verified, you can start sending (and receiving!) updates instantly. Depending on where you are, you may have a local number. You can send a text message to any of these numbers and it will post directly to your Twitter profile, and be sent to all of your followers:

We currently support 2-way (sending and receiving) Twitter SMS via short codes and 1-way (sending only) via long codes.

Short codes for 2-way Twitter SMS:

US: 40404
Australia: 0198089488 (Telstra customers)
Canada: 21212
UK: 86444 (Vodafone, Orange, 3 and O2 customers)
India: 53000 (Bharti Airtel customers)
Indonesia: 89887 (AXIS and 3 customers)
Ireland: 51210 (O2 customers)

New Zealand: 8987 (Vodafone and Telecom NZ customers)

Haiti:40404(Digicel)

1-way long codes:
Germany: +49 17 6888 50505
Sweden: +46 737 494222
All other countries: +44 762 4801423

We're working on getting more local short codes for other places, and we'll update this list as they become available. If you travel out of the country, check with your mobile provider to see if they route text messages to local short codes, of if you'll need to use the international number instead.

If you use 40404, you can send and receive unlimited messages from Twitter, but we do advise you to check with your provider to make sure your text plan covers text messaging. If you use one of our other numbers, you're limited to 250 messages per week, refreshing every Sunday at 12:00am GMT.

For people using any number other than 40404: once your phone is verified, you'll be able to send your updates to +44 7624 801423 , but you will not be able to receive text updates from Twitter. Find out more on the Twitter Blog.

A word of caution for UK residents using the international number: some carriers don't charge an international fee to use the Twitter international number within the UK, but others do. Some carriers consider it an international number and charge from .15 to .25 per message. Remember to check your phone plan for international rates; be aware that even in the UK, standard messaging rates vary by carrier, and do apply.

Questions, concerns, comments? Let us know.


How To Add Your Phone via One-Way Long Codes (International)

Submitted Dec 09, 2009 by laurag

Want to add your phone?

Using Twitter is easy, especially if you have a phone! As of now, Twitter supports these countries: US, UK, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Canada. If you want more information, please click here.

If you are living somewhere else, you can use this number. +44 762 4801423.

Important: If you use this number, you cannot receive messages from Twitter.

Yes, we know this complicates things. The good thing is, you can still add your phone by following these steps:

Send a text to +44 762 4801423 with the word START. If you live in Germany (+49 17 6888 50505) or Sweden (+46 737 494222) , please send START to these phone numbers

Wait 2 minutes and then send your user name to the same number. Do not use @, your username ONLY. Example: username1. Hit send.

Wait 2 minutes. Send your password to the same number. This is case sensitive!
Wait 2 minutes. Finally, you can send OK to same number.

Done! You can use Twitter with your phone. Please send a "test" text and log in to Twitter via web to make sure your number is added!

Once again, you will not be able to receive texts to confirm phone activation!

If you are still having problems with this process, please send us a ticket.

Thanks!

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

What is sleep time?

Sleep time allows you to schedule an OFF and ON time for Twitter updates going to your phone.
If you don't want to get Twitter updates at night, you can schedule your updates to shut off when you go to sleep, and turn back on automatically when you wake up. If you know you have meetings between 3 and 5 pm, you can turn your updates off between those times.

Setting your sleep time

Sleep time settings are found under the mobile tab of your settings page.

Note: make sure your time zone is correct or your sleep time might operate on someone else's schedule!
Check your time zone in the account tab of your account settings.
If you haven't added your phone yet, find out more about using Twitter with your phone here.

To set or change your sleep time:

Log in to Twitter

In the upper right hand navigation bar, click Settings

Click the third settings tab, Mobile

If you've added your phone, you'll see a drop down box to set sleep time; select your off and on time from the drop down box.

Save your changes

Problems?
Submit a request to our Support team.

Submitted Feb 09 by keerthi

You can now connect your phone to your Twitter account from the web! Our web activation is back with a few changes that will make the process easier.

To add your phone from the web, please visit your Devices tab on Settings page, as shown below. (If you want to add your phone from your phone, find more instructions here.)

Then, follow these simple steps:

a) Choose your country from the first box.

b) Enter your number without a country code or leading zero (these are handled automatically by our system)

c) Choose your carrier from the drop-down box (non-US users only)

d) Click Start to verify your phone.

You will be then directed to a page that will ask you to send us the word "GO" as the confirmation code to a number.

After we receive the confirmation code from you, we will add your device and you'll be set to use Twitter on your phone.

(To know more about Twitter commands, click here.)

If you are in a country other than the US, you will see an additional box that asks you to ' Choose your carrier ' after you have entered your number.

Select the carrier that you use and click on Start to verify your phone. Send us the confirmation code and have your phone added to Twitter!

Happy Tweeting!

Thanks,

Twitter Support Team

Submitted Mar 26, 2009 by crystal

Good news for Vodafone-using UK residents everywhere

Twitter has been working with Vodafone to come up with better solutions for international text messaging.
We're pleased to announce our first Vodafone short code for the United Kingdom!
Vodafone is the first carrier to provide a short code especially for people who use Twitter.
If Vodafone is your carrier and you live in the UK, you'll see the new short code in your device settings page: 86444.
Start sending messages to this number today!
(For this to work, you have be a UK resident with mobile service provider Vodafone UK.)

86444: Free incoming Twitter messages for VodafoneUK users!

If you're a Vodaphone subscriber and you use the new short code, 86444, all messages coming from Twitter are free!
Wait, there's more: for the first few weeks, messages sent TO Twitter will also be free-- thanks, Vodafone!
After the introductory period, all text messages sent to Twitter via 86444 count as local text messages, deducted from your regular text message plan.
For those who have no text messaging plans on their mobile, each message sent to 86444 incurs Vodafone's standard text message charge.

Note: If you receive more than 500 incoming text messages from Twitter per month, Vodafone may ask you reduce your incoming text message volume, but there is no official limit on how many messages you can receive.

I'm on Vodafone UK; how do I get started?

If you're on the Vodafone network and already use your mobile to send messages to Twitter, great: simply replace the number in your address book with this short code: 86444.
Text your Twitter updates to that number to get started. To see what you can do directly from your phone (like turning text updates off and on for specific people) check out our mobile commands!

More Vodafone short codes for other countries

Right now we've got a short code for the UK, but there's more on the way!
We're working on getting more short codes in other countries as well, so that everyone can send and receive Twitter messages with ease!

Thanks Kevin, for working hard to bring SMS back to international Twitter folks!

Submitted Nov 04, 2009 by keerthi

Missing the 'Devices' tab...?

Nope, it's not a bug! The 'Devices' tab under the Settings page is now renamed as 'Mobile'. This change was made to allow for easier and more apparent navigation of the Settings tabs. You can still find your mobile options on your Settings page in the same place where 'Device' was located prior.

What does the Mobile tab do?

Clicking on the 'Mobile' tab will display instructions on how you can add your phone to your account on Twitter. It also displays the list of shortcodes which you can use to post tweets on Twitter. More about Twitter phone numbers here. Send 'START' now to your country's shortcode and link up your phone with Twitter. It's fun and super convenient! Information on commands that you can use to Twitter from your phone is here.

Thanks,
Twitter Support

Submitted May 22, 2009 by crystal

Good news for people everywhere!

As of today, New Zealand now has it's very own short code: 8987 (twtr!) If you live in New Zealand, you can send text messages to this local code rather than the UK long code we've been using. Supported carriers at this time are Vodafone and Telecom NZ.

Follow Telecom NZ! Fun fact.... the very popular NZ National rugby team ("The All Blacks") is also on Twitter http://twitter.com/nzru.


Which Mobile Carriers Does Twitter Support?

Submitted Jun 16, 2009 by crystal

Who can send text to Twitter?

Anyone! Twitter accepts texts from many places around the world.
Although we don't deliver outgoing texts to everyone, we accept texts from all over the place!
We're still working on getting more international numbers so everyone can receive messages from Twitter, but in the meantime, try sending some to us.
See our list of international numbers here.

Who can receive text from Twitter?

People using provider-specific international short codes (like Vodafone's UK short code or Orange UK or the New Zealand short code) should be able to send and receive messages.
People using our long international number, +44 762 4801423, will be able to send text to Twitter, but wont be able to receive texts.
Find out more here.

If you're in the US, the following carriers are supported:

AT&T

Verizon

Sprint

Nextel

Boost

T-Mobile

Alltel

Dobson/ Cellular One

Cincinnati Bell

US Cellular

Virgin Mobile

Resellers/small phone companies using any of these major networks should be able to use Twitter as well.
Most prepaid services (such as Metro PCS) are not currently supported.
Exceptions to this are Virgin and Boost.


Does Twitter Charge Me For Text Messages?

Submitted Nov 11, 2008 by crystal

Twitter doesn't charge you for text messages (SMS)

We don't charge you for text messages. However, as stated in our FAQ, depending on your service provider and your text plan, you might see usage charges for text messaging, and Twitter can become highly addictive. Those messages add up fast! If you don't want to deal with message counting, try using Twitter from the web first and see how you like it.

Text messages from Twitter are billed in the same way as text messages from someone you know.
How Twitter will affect your phone bill depends on what text messaging plan you've chosen for your phone, and text messaging allowance. For this reason, we ask you to acknowledge that standard rates do apply when you add your phone to Twitter. This basically means that you understand that your service provider might have fees for sending and receiving SMS/text messages.

Depending on their mobile plan, some people pay a per-message charge of ten cents or more. Some people have an allotted number of text messages monthly. Some (lucky!) people have unlimited text plans. Twitter can be addicting, so check your plan to make sure you don't get a huge bill.

For all people using the international number: once your phone is verified, you'll be able to send your updates to +44 7624 801423, but you will not be able to receive text updates from Twitter. Find out more on the Twitter Blog.

A word of caution for those using the international number: some carriers don't charge an international fee to use Twitter's international number. Others, even in the UK, consider it an international number and charge from .15 to .25 per message. Remember to check your phone plan for international rates; be aware that even in the UK, standard messaging rates vary by carrier, and do apply.

Questions?
Ask us.


Which Twitter Account is My Mobile Phone Associated With?

Submitted Jan 05 by keerthi

There are several reasons you might want to verify if your mobile number is associated with a Twitter account:

1) When signing up, you have sent Start multiple times to the Twitter phone number and are not receiving any messages.

2) You are receiving notifications on your phone but you dont remember to which account your phone is associated.

3) You created an Twitter account from your device while adding your phone by replying SIGNUP and do not know the password of your account.

For any of the above mentioned cases, click on the 'Already using Twitter on your phone?' link located on the home page as shown below.

You will be directed to a page where you are asked to enter your phone number, enter your phone number along with the country code.

If the device is linked with any of the Twitter accounts we will send you a Verification Code to your device and ask you to verify it, just to confirm that the number indeed belongs to you! :)

Follow the instructions and voila! you will find out to which account is you number associated with.

If you are still unable to locate your device or still having problem adding your device, write to us, we are happy to help!

Thanks,

Twitter Support Team.


I Sent START/Username/Password ? No Response From Twitter!

Submitted Nov 05, 2009 by keerthi

Sent 'Start' but no response from Twitter...

Sending 'Start' to Twitter should provide instructions on how to add your device to your account. If you don't receive any message from us, there might be many reasons:

Please make sure that your carrier is supported and also that you are sending 'start' to the right number.

'Start' is an instruction , a command. Do not message 'Start' along with your username, signature or any other characters. For example : Start laura
or
Start,
luv keerthi
or Start :) or
Start ! or Re:| Start. These are not acceptable!

If your phone is already added and is associated with another account, you will not receive any message from us and start will simply be posted as a tweet on your account! Check to see if your phone is attached to any of your Twitter accounts here.

Sent 'Start', receiving - "Sorry, your phone is not verified..."

If you receive a message that says 'Sorry, your phone is not verified. Please verify the phone before receiving Tweets" from us, it may be because your phone is in a 'half-verified state'. Now, what's that?

If you visit the 'Mobile' tab on Settings page of your account, you will see that the verification code is still displayed on the page, unlike what the Mobile page should actually display. We currently do not provide this method of adding the device. Click on the 'Delete and Start over' button found on the page to remove the phone from your account. Then send 'start' to the appropriate Twitter number and you will be able to add your phone. Please however, make sure that you check all the Twitter accounts that you own.

Twitter is not accepting my password!

No matter how many times you enter the password you receive a 'wrong password' message from Twitter.

When you are requested to send the password of your account for verification purposes, please enter the password correctly. Few points to keep in mind -

Passwords are case sensitive, this means 'a' and 'A' are different.

Also be careful, phones normally CAPITALIZE the first letter of the word! This may cause your password to be incorrect.

Make sure you do not have the signature or something like Re:| associated with the password.

If you have forgotten your password, you can always restore it from here. Another important thing to note is that you will be given 3 attempts to enter the correct password. If you are unsuccessful, not to worry, send 'start' again after a while and instructions will be sent to add your device.

Twitter is not accepting my username!

No matter how many times you enter your username, you are receiving "Sorry this username does not exist!". This might be because of one of the following reasons:

You are entering a username that does not exist on Twitter. If so, and you have NO twitter account send 'Start' again, this will break the current flow. You will receive something like: "Welcome to Twitter! Reply with SIGNUP to begin. Already on Twitter? Reply with your 'USERNAME' instead."

Now, reply as 'SIGNUP' and follow the instructions.

If you already have a Twitter account to which you want to link the phone to, make sure you have spelled the username correctly, otherwise your phone might get tied-up with a different Twitter account.

The
system will also not recognize the username if it is associated with a deleted account.
When you reply with username, do not use quotes, symbols and smileys along with it. 'Luke'
or @luke or luke , <3
is incorrect!
If you 'reply' to the Twitter message the username may sometimes reach us like 'Re:keerthi', please remove the Re from the mesage!. Only then, your username is recognized.

If you are confident that you are sending us only the required details and still not getting any response from us, try one last thing:

Send STOP and again send START. Things should become normal.

You should be able to add your phone now. If not and you are still having problems, please write to us and we will investigate it further. We are sorry for the inconvenience!

Thanks,
Twitter Support

Comments

kyleedoesthings

It will ask for my username once I send start, but I never receive a text back after I send it. I put quotes around it and I was asked for my password, but then it did the same for it. If I don't put quotes I never get a response, if I do put quotes it says I'm wrong. I have Verizon and an EnV Touch if that means anything.

Nov-06 2009 18:49.

kyleedoesthings

Also I've made sure everything is spelled right, my number isn't used by any other accounts, and I'm sending it to the right number. I've restarted the setup at least four times trying to get it to work and nothing. I tried the old way where you put your number in online and it tells me I already have an account which I was completely aware of, hence the problem. I'm not sure if this is where I'm supposed to write to you to but everything I click leads me back here so I'm just gonna cross my fingers and hope 'cause I'm getting mighty frustrated.

Nov-06 2009 19:01.

DjBlazentrax

I am not able to add my phone either spoke with sprint they checked everything on thier end ...I text the 40404 and text start and I never recieve anything

Nov-06 2009 19:27.

ashley_baby13

how do you put your # in like before?

Nov-06 2009 19:28.

laja2

Hey, I'm also having troubles adding my phone to my account with sprint.
After I send the start text, I -might- receive a text asking for my username ten minutes to half an hour later. If I give my username, I -might- receive a text asking for my password, or I'll receive a text saying to start the process over.
After I send my password, everything disappears into the void.
I've tried to have the online verifications sent to my phone, no avail.
I don't know what's going on here, but this is a bad introduction to your service. :/

Nov-06 2009 19:37.

ashley_baby13

I deleted it off my phone.. from the web because i kept receiving the same txt... and i tried putting it back on,, but they changed it, and im with rogers and cant get it to work.?

Nov-06 2009 19:39.

DylanAM

Hi, I seem to be having the same problem as the above people. Today I joined Twitter, and made my username DylanAM. I then tried to add my Sprint phone. I sent a text message with the message START as instructed, but no response followed. I repeated the process after about 10 minutes and still nothing. As I have a secondary phone (a simple Tracfone) I tried joining with it, just to test. To my surprise, Twitter DID respond to the Tracfone within 10 seconds. I wasn't interested in connecting THAT phone to my account, so I patiently tried again with the Sprint. Nothing. Thinking that it might be my problem, I sent texts back and forth between my two phones to test whether they worked. And they were received both ways -- so my text messaging is working, both sending and receiving.

As I see it, Sprint is within Twitter's carried platforms. What can be done to connect this Sprint phone? In thanks, I offer to cook the entire Twitter Help staff a big steaming pot of homemade New Orleans jambalaya! It's really good, man. Really good. You'll not regret it.

Nov-06 2009 19:40.

KNL17

I am with Fido and I have had 4-5 repeated messages from tweets followed for the past 3 days. Response to commands via sms have been non-existent for 2 days. When I deleted my number and tried to add it back, there was no response at all from Twitter. I send off a report to the tech side and all I got was a series of links to FAQs. There seems to be a real problem Twitter and a solution is needed. Thanks.

Nov-06 2009 20:04.

__april

I am having the same problem.
I've had twitter sms added to my account since I opened
it then a couple of days ago I kept receiving 3-4 (sometimes more) of the same messages from the one person i subscribe to via sms.
I also noticed it wasn't updating my status even though I texted it (it worked before!) ... I deleted my phone and then tried to add it again but it won't let me.

I'm with Rogers.
Is this a global issue with twitter?

Nov-06 2009 21:19.

zroom28

I'm using version and i text Start to twitter, and i get "Sorry, your phone is not yet verified. Please verify before sending tweets." I don't know what i'm doing wrong, i've never used twitter before on my phone. When i go to the mobile tab, i don't see any verification code or anything.

Nov-06 2009 22:29.

MyXBsHuBoX

I been having problems with my username..i am already in twitter and it keeps telling me that the username isn't on Twitter...i keep getting the same reply.. Please help..thank you

Nov-06 2009 23:04.

kellybobellyyy

i text 'start' to 40404 and i get no response at all, it just doesnt want to work. how do i get it to work?

Nov-06 2009 23:17.

TheWhang

I am in Canada on Fido.
Updating through text messaging stopped working for me a few days ago.
I removed my phone number from my account hoping that re-adding it will help.
I sent START to 21212 and received no confirmation.

Nov-07 2009 01:21.

aKalisperas

the same thing is happening to me i text 21212 with START and get no response. I got a new rogers phone and deleted my other phone number and now it wont work i get no response !!!

Nov-07 2009 05:54.

KevinEMcDonald

I put my username in exactly like its shown on my twitter account and it keeps returning with. Hmm, that username isn't on Twitter. Want to create a new username? Reply w/ SIGNUP.

Nov-07 2009 06:11.

aKalisperas

can some one please help !!!

Nov-07 2009 06:20.

eightlivestogo

I'm on Canada's telus, which previously supported twitter it's phone. Many of my friends on the same provider tweet from their phones. My tweets stopped coming through to my own on and off about 6 days ago. And then yesterday stopped all together. I removed the mobile device via the web to try and start again, but now there is no option and 21212 commanding start will not even get me a text message of confirmation.

Nov-07 2009 07:04.

MountainMcC

I also put my username in exactly like its shown on my twitter account and
it keeps returning with "Hmm, that username isn't on Twitter. Want to
create a new username? Reply w/ SIGNUP". Even SIGNUP comes back with the "Isn't on Twitter" message.

Nov-07 2009 07:10.

chinkychii

"

I am having the same problem.
I've had
twitter sms added to my account since I opened
it then a couple of
days ago I kept receiving 3-4 (sometimes more) of the same messages
from the one person i subscribe to via sms.
I also noticed it wasn't
updating my status even though I texted it (it worked before!) ... I
deleted my phone and then tried to add it again but it won't let me.

I'm with Rogers.
Is this a global issue with twitter?"

I am having the same problem too.
I've sent 'start' to 21212 countless times and it hasn't given me a reply yet.

Nov-07 2009 08:28.

Submitted Aug 04, 2009 by crystal

Missing updates on the web

When you miss your Twitter updates... they miss you too!
Twitter updates are delivered in real time, so if they've gone missing we may be having problems.
Check the status blog to find out if Twitter is experiencing known issues with tweet delivery.

Check the Known Issues pages to see if Support is already aware of and tracking your problem.
(You can also follow @twitter to receive updates from us when we're working on problems.)

If you're missing someone's updates in your home page, be sure to check their profile to verify that you're following the person. (Make sure you're not blocking them, as well.) Check your timeline history to verify that their most recent message isn't there. Some things to try:

Block and un-block the person

Un-follow and re-follow the person

For protected persons, cancel your follow request, and send a new request

to see if their updates show up.
Sometimes it helps to reestablish a follow relationship when things seem fishy.
If you try this and it doesn't work, submit a request and include the following information:

Your user name and the user name of the person(s) you're missing updates from

URL of the most recent update you missed, like so: http://twitter.com/coates/status/1114430687

If you're missing all messages from the person(s), or just intermittent messages

If you're able to see the updates on a 3rd party application (like Tweetie, Twitterrific, or Twhirl) even though they don't appear in your Twitter home page

If you're able to receive the updates on your phone, if you have one attached to your account.

Our support team will do some sleuth work to see what's going on.

Missing updates on your phone

Missing Twitter text updates is fairly common.
If the Twitter text queue is too overloaded with text updates, some will be dropped.
Find out more about this here.
This means that occasional missing updates from random folks at busy times is expected.
If you're missing updates from the same or all person(s) consistently, this may be a different problem.

Things to Check

make sure you're getting the updates on the web; if you aren't, that's probably why you aren't getting them via text; refer to the section above

make sure your time zone is correct, and your sleep time isn't the reason updates aren't incoming

check your settings to make sure your phone number is added to your account.
verify that your phone updates are ON; send ON to Twitter to get the confirmation message that updates are ON.

be sure you're following the person whose updates you're missing, and updates for that specific person are turned on.
The default phone setting is OFF until you visit the profile page and turn text updates ON, or send follow username from your phone, like this: follow amy

If all of the above is good, try:

un-following and re-following the person whose updates you're missing

setting phone updates to ON from the profile page; send follow username from your phone to get the confirmation that text updates are on

If you're still not getting updates from that person, submit a request with the details about what's happening, and don't for get to include this info:

Your user name and the user name of the person you're missing updates from

URL of the missed update, like so: http://twitter.com/coates/status/1114430687

Your phone number and mobile service provider

Our support team will look into it for you.

Missing updates on a third party application

If you're receiving updates normally on Twitter but they aren't showing up on your third party application, you may want to contact their support department to see if anything is amiss.
Most app developers also have Twitter accounts and help sections for their applications for these situations.

If you're an app developer and something has gone awry with your app, get in touch with the API team.

Why do my Twitter updates turn off intermittently?

Assuming that you haven't exceeded any limits, you might not be getting updates because Twitter was unable to communicate with either your phone or your network, and turned off your updates automatically.

When we send a text message to your phone, we receive a verification message back from your service provider confirming that the message was received. If for whatever reason we don't receive a reply from your phone's network confirming that your phone (or your phone's network) is receiving our text messages, we turn off texts to your phone automatically. This might happen if you go to an area with no reception, for example. This avoids sending costly tweets into space.

Submitted Mar 03 by tholden

Are you seeing robots along with the message "Something is technically wrong" while logged into mobile.twitter.com? You are not alone! Our engineers are aware of the issue and working quickly to resolve this issue. If you are experiencing this issue, pls leave your Username and details in the comments below.

Thanks for being patient!

Twitter Mobile Support

@suppot

Click here to login and comment

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Jan 07 by keerthi

If you are not receiving any messages from Twitter and your carrier is AT&T or Verizon you might be seeing one of the below happening with you:

-
You are sending START multiple times to add you device and are not receiving any acknowledgement from us!

-
You are not receiving updates from your followers even though you have already added your device and have turned ON the device updates!

-
You are sending messages and they are not being posted on your timeline.

Do not worry, we are currently seeing lot of message failures with these carriers due to the network traffic and our engineers have been informed. We are aware of this problem and working with the carriers to provide better service.

Please look into our other help articles for troubleshooting .

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience.

Thanks,

Twitter Support Team.

UPDATE: 2/17/10 -- Verizon users are indicating that some tweets are not being delivered. We are working w/ Verizon to identify and resolve this issue ASAP.

UPDATE: 2/11/10 -- AT&T SMS deliveries are at ~65% throughput. We are working with AT&T to resolve this issue ASAP. - TH

UPDATE: 2/9/2010 -- Our Engineers have fixed this issue and Verizon, T-mobile and Sprint users will be receiving messages now!.

UPDATE: 2/8/2010 -- Verizon, T-Mobile, & Sprint customers also reporting missing tweets. - TH

UPDATE: 2/2/2010 KP
- Issues with AT&T customers will be resolved very soon. We understand your frustration and apologize for the inconvenience.

UPDATE : [01/12/2010] - The issue with T-mobile users is fixed now. Thanks for your patience.

Comments

_chelseaabee

So does anyone know if it will start working again?

Jan-07 2010 15:11.

DEWsCandiGrl

There is also an issue with T-Mobile users.

Feb-08 2010 10:41.

wicked12

Im getting my friends posts and @ replies, but no posts from the celebrities I follow since Thursday 2/4/10. Every day since around Jan 25th I dont receive ANY updates from anyone for several hours usually between 5-8 pm CST. I have AT Im glad you know about this issue and I hope you are working on it because its extremely frustrating. About 20 of my friends arent getting celebrity updates to their phones either

Feb-08 2010 10:58.

jormanda

I have T-Mobile and haven't reeceived any messages from twitter on my phone for several days.

Feb-08 2010 11:03.

kelsie1983

I'm on Sprint and am getting *some* SMS updates from about a third of users I've marked for delivery, but the rest are undelivered. Hope there's a fix soon!

Feb-08 2010 11:58.

JENinNORCAL

I'm on AT and I haven't received SMS messages in about 10 days, DM's are coming thru fine. Hoping this is fixed soon!

Feb-08 2010 12:10.

ktmarcello

I have a Verizon phone and whenever I would try to tweet through text it wouldn't go through, but all of my other text messaging is working, and tweeting through text had worked for weeks for me. Whats the problem??

Feb-08 2010 12:41.

sassycarmichael

I have Sprint and have been having problems for about 4 days now! I am glad @support is aware of the issue and is working on it! I need my TWITTER!!!!

Feb-08 2010 13:01.

jlo343434

Tweets from users using Uber Twitter are not coming through on SMS text (Verizon)

Feb-08 2010 13:13.

LorelaiAnn

I have t-mobile and am not receiving any messages as well.

Feb-08 2010 13:35.

brittanylambeth

i have alltel and i'm not receiving any messages.

Feb-08 2010 14:02.

blvthatschlitz

I have T-mobile and I'm not recieving ANY celebrity tweets but am getting them just fine from non-verified accounts. How can I correct this?

Feb-08 2010 14:09.

kelcraw

I am on Rogers Canada and having the same problem...Been 4 days now and no updates sent to my phone

Feb-08 2010 14:19.

jomartin26

Having issues recieving tweets from people I follow

Feb-08 2010 15:27.

xJoeJonasiLuvUx

do we kno id AT is working yet? or wen will it?

Feb-08 2010 16:54.

Caroline1121

I am not receiving any tweets, is it just att

Feb-08 2010 18:16.

sassycarmichael

I have not found ANYTHING about when this will be fixed! It is driving me CRAZY! LOL I am getting about 1/3 of the tweets from people that I follow sent SMS to my sprint phone. I did put a trouble ticket in this morning and now it says that Troy Holden has been assigned to the ticket, which earlier, it just said "support staff". Progress??? I hope so!!!

Feb-08 2010 18:19.

Nothin2personal

I'm only getting one person's tweet sent to my phone for the last 3 days from a list of numerous people that should be coming to my phone. T-Mobile had me thinkin I was trippin. I though I was a problem solver..LOL (SMH)

Feb-08 2010 18:40.

sophhh31

I HAVE TMOBILE and I haven't been getting updates from twitter on my phone for days. it's really annoying.

Feb-08 2010 18:52.

Nurseloree

I have AT as a carrier. Haven't gotten any updates from those that I follow in 4 days. I have checked all of my settings, made sure time zone and sms messaging is on. Even reset.... Still no updates.

Feb-08 2010 19:48.

sassycarmichael

This is so annoying! Anybody hear anything about an ETA on a fix? I have searched and searched and I have found NOTHING! I would have thought that someone would be addressing this on the Twitter blog or status.....hmmmmmmm

Feb-08 2010 19:57.

lisamh77

I have Verizon. I have not been receiving any updates from twitter from the majority of the people that I follow unless they are doing @replies to people I follow.

Feb-08 2010 20:14.

DearPatience

I have T-Mobile, and I have not recieved any SMS updates in over a week. I get my friends updates, but I do NOT get the celebrities updates. This is soooo annoying. I have un followed, then followed again, i have restarted my SMS updates, I have done everything i can. but nothing is working

Feb-08 2010 20:51.

kiwiblockhead

I'm using Vodafone here in New Zealand and like the others am not receiving the majority of the tweets via sms to my cell. Any idea when this may be fixed as it's already been 4+ days, if it's likely to be some time I may have to resort to paying for them again. Would appreciate some sort of update/acknowledge this is being fixed.

Feb-08 2010 21:15.

saravananm92

i am using BHARATI AIRTEL and i am not recieving any updates from twitter by sms on phone

Feb-08 2010 23:15.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Dec 09, 2009 by tholden

Are you using SMS to send & receive your Tweets?

Users report receiving 40404 text messages from people they follow even though they are not set up for mobile/device notifications, nor are they mentioned in their tweets. You are not alone.

Do not worry, we have escalated this bug to our engineers and we should have a fix very soon.

Still frustrated? Please feel free to submit a comment below and/or submit a new ticket to our help desk.

Comments

RomyvE

I have a little problem,

I'm living in Holland and I wanna add my phone to twitter. I needed to send START to +447624801423 because I'm not living in one of the other countries. And then you should receive a message from twitter, to show which account belongs to your number. But countries with number +447624801423 can't receive any messages from twitter! And I really wanna add my phone haha

help me please (:

@RomyvE

Dec-20 2009 10:34.

operknockity

The first run of spurious SMS notifications stopped on Dec 15th. But I have started getting new spurious SMS notifications as of about 8PM on Dec 23rd.

Dec-24 2009 06:00.

mybensep

wellll

Dec-24 2009 23:53.

osool

hi im tarek seleim

Dec-25 2009 01:31.

Mohamad azoenk

Hi..iam e new in the tweet..pLease add me

Dec-25 2009 10:56.

Michael_Heywood

I have been receiving text updates from NYTimes even though I have updates turned off.

Dec-25 2009 14:30.

chhorn128

hello, am Alina boza

Jan-04 2010 23:46.

RyanAndrew82

Um... I'm a Lady Gaga fan and all... but I keep getting the same 3 tweets from her OVER AND OVER on a 15 minute interval or so. This is getting ridiculous. I've disabled SMS notifications from her, but it didn't work... I've disabled SMS notifications altogether on my phone, but that didn't work either... I then completely UNFOLLOWED her and am still getting a steady stream of Gaga and am this > < close to deleting my Twitter account entirely. This is NOT the first time this has happened and I'm feeling quite frustrated.... :(

Jan-06 2010 18:34.

Penias Banda

how can i add friends?

Jan-07 2010 12:51.

Temane Mashiloane

Heita hw r u doin

Jan-10 2010 10:54.

bhoomibpatel

how send free sms my friend?

Jan-10 2010 21:30.

benusnz

im recieving @replies on my phone from people I am following but i am not following them on my mobile?

Jan-12 2010 16:01.

hugo_pitty

ola tudo bem com voc? twitter hugo_pitty

Jan-15 2010 03:12.

RebaMyIdol

I keep getting an error message that says I have reached a limit of 5000 messages a day

Jan-18 2010 17:38.

tyiau

Como que usa isso

Jan-19 2010 08:17.

Lawrence Wilson

Just started tweeting..hello

Jan-22 2010 16:11.

Ujena_Jade

im not recieving sms notifications.. like i can tweet on my phone but im not notified when my friends tweet... help me!!

Jan-24 2010 12:42.


Why Can't I Retweet Certain Retweets?

Submitted Dec 23, 2009 by emilypinkerton

If you are having difficulty sharing someone else?s Tweet with your followers via Retweet (RT), it?s most likely because their account is protected. You can see their Tweets in your timeline because they have accepted your follow request, but because they have chosen not to share their Tweets publicly, their Tweets cannot be retweeted by you or anyone else.

To verify if the user you are following has a protected account or not, visit their profile page by clicking on their avatar or their username next to their Tweets in your timeline.

If you see this icon
next to the user?s name and information on their profile page, their account is protected and you will not be able to share their Tweets on your timeline - unless you ask them nicely to make their Tweets public, which can be done from the account settings page.

I checked, and their account isn?t protected!

Were you trying to tweet from a list view? Currently, Twitter?s Lists feature does not support the retweet function within lists. If you hover over a Tweet in your list, as shown below, you will notice that you have the option to reply to the Tweet, but in order to retweet it, you must visit the user?s profile page as shown above and retweet manually.

Similarly, if you have found a Tweet via Twitter Search, as shown in the example below, you do not have the option to retweet from Search. Just as with lists, you must visit that user?s profile in order to retweet the Tweet.

Submitted Jan 19 by juliej

In order to control abuse, Twitter limits how often you can search from a single network address.

At corporations, events, and conferences, it is common for many people to share the same network address. In some of these cases, our rate limiting may be too strict.

If you see the following error message when using Twitter search, please help us improve our service by clicking 'let us know' and filling out the pop-up form.

Submitted Nov 30, 2009 by laurag

Do you see the images below while you are on Twitter? Do not fret, we are working on minimizing the number of times you see these cute images on our site!

Over Capacity

This means that there are too many tweets.
Just wait a little while then try again.

Too many whales during a small period of time? Please check out our Status Blog where we keep you updated about these issues!

Something is technically wrong

Our bad!
There may be an issue on our end - but we are working on it.
If you keep seeing the robot over and over again, please submit a ticket to our Help Desk so we can investigate!
Please remember to be detailed about what you were doing before you saw the robot (e.g. I was changing my background image, I was searching for #topmovies, etc)

Note: We encourage you to wait a while before taking action on error images, most of the time, our engineers are working hard on fixing the issue!

Submitted Sep 23, 2009 by Charles

I'm locked out!

If you've reached this page, it means you're currently locked out of your account for too many failed login attempts:

When your account is locked, you will not be able to log in--even with the correct password.

This lock lasts about an hour and then will clear on its own. You can try again after the amount of time listed at the bottom of the page has elapsed.

Locks that Aren't Clearing

If more than an hour has passed, or you're locked on your first attempt at logging in, please do the following:

1. Disable your third-party applications (like Tweetdeck, Tweetie, widgets, etc.)

It's likely that a third-party application you've approved is still trying to log you in with an old password. If you have an application you use for tweeting from your desktop (like Tweetie or Tweetdeck), or a widget or other external service that uses your Twitter username or password, please disable these applications temporarily.

In the case of a desktop application, just make sure it's completely closed down. See the FAQ at the bottom for some more detailed steps for specific applications.

2. Wait an hour

At this point, please just hang tight; the lock on your account will automatically be lifted in about an hour.

3. Make sure you can log in to Twitter.com

To make sure you've got the right password and that your lock has cleared, check to confirm that you can log in successfully at http://twitter.com/login. If you can't remember your password, you can request a new password here.

If you don't receive the password reset email or if the password reset process still does not get you into your account, send an email to password@twitter.com stating your username, the email address that you used to register your Twitter account, and a list of any third-party applications you use (like Tweetdeck, Tweetie, or widgets). Your request will be added to our support queue and will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis.

4. Finally, re-enable your applications using the new, correct password

Once you've confirmed you can log in at Twitter.com, you can individually re-enable the applications or widgets you'd like to use.

Common Questions:

Why does Twitter lock accounts?

Twitter limits the number of times that someone can try logging into an account for security reasons: we don't want to give third-parties unlimited attempts at guessing your password.

If the number of login attempts exceeds a certain limit, the account is locked down for an hour and additional attempts to log in will fail, even when you supply the correct password.

Was my account compromised?

If a user's account appears to be hacked or phished, we may reset the passwords for the affected users to revoke access to the hacker. In these cases, we send an email to the user with additional information on how to reset their password. If you think your account has been hacked or phished, you'll find some additional information on this help page for compromised accounts.

Specific applications: What if I keep getting locked out and I use TweetDeck?

If you're using TweetDeck and are locked out of your account, please shut down TweetDeck entirely. You will not be able to verify or change your new password in TweetDeck while you are locked out, and keeping TweetDeck open may be causing your ongoing locks. Wait an hour and then confirm that you can sign in to Twitter.com.

Once you've logged in successfully at Twitter.com, please open up TweetDeck, and go immediately to Preferences and then Accounts. Select the account, then verify and save your correct password.

Submitted Oct 06, 2009 by eddie

Protecting your account is not retroactive

When you protect your account,
all tweets posted after protection will be private: unlisted in Twitter
search and 3rd party applications. All tweets posted before protection,
however, will still be listed in search engines and 3rd party
applications. To find out how to remove your updates from Google
search, check out this article.
Twitter does not have the ability to remove content on other websites other than Twitter.com.

When you protect your account, only approved followers can read your updates.

If your account has never been public...

If your account has never been public, or in other words, has always
been protected, your updates should never show up in Twitter search or
other public search engines.
If this is happening, change your
password immediately and submit a request and include the following information:

when this started happening

where you've seen your
private updates posted

list any/all third party applications you
use

Submitted Oct 06, 2009 by Lukester

Limits on Twitter

Twitter has imposed reasonable limits to help prevent system and
user abuse. If you hit a technical limit, we?ll tell you by showing an
error message in your browser when you try to perform an action. If
you've hit a limit, it means you've exceeded one of these limits:

1,000 updates per day

250 direct messages per day

150 API requests per hour

Follow limit

You can find our info page on Update and API Limits here.

What are the follow limits?

We do not limit the number of people who can follow you, but we have
put limits on how aggressively users can follow others. Every user can
follow 2000 people total. Once you?ve followed 2000 users, there are
limits to the number of additional users you can follow: this limit is
different for every user and is based on your ratio of followers to
following. The Follow Limits and Best Practices help page has more information on Twitter?s follow limits and recommended
practices. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter and everyone is
subject to follow limits, even high profile and API accounts.

But I'm white listed!

Some API administrators have whitelist status so their applications
can function without hitting system limits for direct messages, etc.
Whitelisting means that an application can have more API requests per
hour; it does not increase the follow limits. All whitelisted accounts are
still subject to follow limits.

If I hit a limit, what should I do?

If you've reached a daily limit, wait 24 hours (or one hour for API requests) and you'll be able to perform the action again.

If you've reached a follow limit, you?ll need to wait until you have more followers before you can follow additional users. Follow limits are systematic. Support cannot remove follow limits.

Why does Twitter have follow limits at all? Do you think I?m a spammer?

Hitting a follow limit does not mean we think you?re a spammer.
These limits help us improve site performance and reliability and helps
us make Twitter a nice place for everyone. We?ve included a more
in-depth discussion of why we have follow limits on the Follow Limits and Best Practices help page.

Submitted Oct 06, 2009 by eddie

Why does this happen?

Direct messages should never post to your timeline. Occasionally
something will go wrong with a 3rd party application, or a carrier will
break a message into several parts. Those sending direct messages via
text message (SMS) should take care when using characters or letters
from alphabets other than English, as these characters count as more
than one English character.

Why are text messages in non-English alphabets broken into multiple parts?

If
you're sending text messages in a language that uses non-English
characters or accented letters, your messages obey a different
character count.
In addition to being measured by characters, a text
message can also be measured in bytes. A standard text message is
limited to 140 bytes: for the English alphabet, that equals 140
characters. For European alphabets it's a little different, as each
character can require up to 4 bytes. For example, this phrase:

??????

has six characters, but consumes 18 bytes.
This phrase:

Voile est l'art du contr?le d'un bateau ? voile.

contains
48 characters but is actually 50 bytes.
Measurement by byte also
occurs when typing updates into the web box: if you're typing in
Chinese, the character count will measure the number of unicode bytes
each character takes up to make sure that it's still under the
equivalent of 140 English characters.

Other Problems with sending direct messages from your phone

Direct messages are sometimes partially sent as a public update if a
long message is sent in two parts by the carrier. If you type a direct
message that exceeds your carrier's text message length (usually 160
characters) the carrier may break the message into two parts.

If your carrier sends long messages in a single text message,
Twitter breaks it into two direct messages for you.
However, if your
carrier sends a lengthy message in two separate text messages before
sending it to Twitter, only one message has "d username" at the
beginning, causing the other half of your direct message to post as a
normal status update because it doesn't have the "d username" in front
of it. If your phone doesn't have a character count, be careful to keep
your messages short and sweet!

If you're not using a phone to post direct messages and they're still posting to the public timeline, it may an error with a 3rd party application.

Change your password immediately, and contact Twitter Support and the Support team for the app you are using to alert folks to a bug.

Submitted Oct 14, 2009 by crystal

Duplicate text?

I can't post my tweet!If trying to post a tweet produces a "duplicate text" error, you've posted the exact same tweet too recently, and should try another tweet. You should only see this error if you post exactly the same text as a recent tweet.

What should I do?

Try posting a different tweet. If you never post the exact same text, you'll never get this error.

Submitted Feb 04 by eddie

I can't access the email address on my Twitter account!

If you're trying to access your Twitter account and you can't access the original email address attached to it, please check out these links to help you retrieve access:

aol.com, aim.com

Submitted Nov 23, 2009 by ginger

Why does Twitter ask for email confirmation?

Email confirmation is an important security check that helps prevent other people from signing up for a Twitter account using your email address. If you need to confirm your email address, you'll see a yellow warning notice when you log in to twitter.com.

It should only take a few seconds to confirm your email address. Upon signing up for your account, we'll send a short email with confirmation instructions to the email address you gave us. If you need a step-by-step tutorial on how to confirm your email address, check out this article:

How Do I Confirm My Email Address?

Having trouble confirming your email?

If you have received the confirmation email, but aren't able to click the link, copy the full URL from the email and paste it into a new web browser window.

If you haven't received the confirmation email, please:

Check the junk mail folder or spam filter in your email account.

Make sure your email address is entered correctly.
Try resending the email by logging in and clicking the Resend Confirmation Link. This link will be in the yellow banner at the top of twitter.com.
If you have multiple email addresses, try using a different email with your Twitter account.

If you still aren't receiving the confirmation email:

Try clicking the Resend Confirmation Link again after a couple of days. We send the emails immediately when you create your account, but it's possible that your email provider was temporarily blocking emails from us, or delivery was delayed.

You can create a new email account with one of the major free email providers. We've found that emails from Twitter are nearly always delivered to major webmail providers like gmail.com, yahoo.com, or hotmail.com.

What happens if you don't confirm your email?

If you don't confirm your email address, you won't receive any email updates from Twitter (for instance, notifications when you have a new follower or when someone sends you a Direct Message). Additionally, you will have limited access to certain other features on Twitter until you have confirmed.

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

New account sign up / login problems

If you signed up for a new account and you're not able to log in, check your email to be sure that you received our welcome message. If you did not receive a welcome message from Twitter, either your account sign up was not successful or your email address is refusing email we are sending to you. Try signing up again or try visiting the profile page of the account you created: http://twitter.com/<your username here>

to be sure you see a profile.
Be sure that you are signing up here:

Submitted Dec 21, 2008 by crystal

Account Restoration is Not Available at This Time

Here is what you saw before deactivating your account:

Information from your deactivated account (ie username and email address) will be unavailable to use on a new account until we release our new account restoration process.

Submitted Nov 24, 2009 by Charles

Do you see the message above when you visit your profile? If you are confused by this message, don't worry! You have nothing to fear. The message "That's you!" is simply telling you that you are looking at your profile and not someone else's. Twitter is displaying the message "That's you!" because that profile you are looking at is you! It's your profile.

Note: the "That's you!" message is where you would normally find the Follow button on other user's profiles. This is because you cannot follow yourself on Twitter.

Submitted Nov 17, 2008 by crystal

Common Username Problems

The most common complaints with user names concern account settings, inactive accounts, Terms of Service violations (Copyright, Trademark, or Impersonation).

Account Settings

Your user name is changeable by editing your account settings.
Some common problems with user names:

Username is already in use: this means that the username is attached to an active or deleted account. You can put the username into a Twitter URL to see if it is active; if not, it is attached to a deleted account. If it's on an active account that also belongs to you, you'll need to log in to that account and change the username to something else to free it up. Note: deleting an account will not immediately free up the username.
You can't use the word 'twitter' or 'admin' in usernames: this is to avoid brand confusion. There was a brief bug that allowed people to register user names with the word "twitter" in them; if you were affected by this, you will have to pick a new username. No account names can contain 'Twitter' or 'Admin' unless they are official Twitter accounts.

Usernames can only be 15 characters long: your real name can be longer, but usernames are kept short for the sake of ease.
This cannot be changed for any account.

Username1: sometimes a duplicate account is created if you send a text message from an unverified phone. Not recognizing the phone number, we ask for your username.
Not knowing that you're starting a new account, you give us your existing username. Since that username is taken (by you) we give you the username+number, like amy25 if there are 24 amys before you. You can complete mobile sign up and delete the account if this happens; more information on this is here.

Terms of Service Violations

Impersonation is against the Terms of Service unless it is a parody.
If you've started an impersonation account, make sure that it is an obvious parody, and avoid the use of copyright protected images.
If you come across an account that is impersonating you or your business/company, file a request with the Twitter Support, specifically, the Terms of Service group.

Copyright violations are handled by our Terms of Service team when we receive DMCA take down notices from the copyright holder.
Please see our Copyright Policy for more information on reporting copyright infringement.
Trademark violations are also handled by our Terms of Service group. If you've found an account that is infringing upon your trademark, please submit a request regarding Terms of Service violation.
In most cases, the accounts are either inactive or news feed accounts started by well intentioned folks.

Twitter is not releasing inactive usernames

Twitter is working on releasing all usernames attached to accounts that still appear on Twitter.com and have been inactive for more than 18 months. We do not have an estimate on when we will be able to release these inactive accounts. Also, we are not currently releasing inactive usernames manually.

If you have a user name question that isn't answered here, please let us know!

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

You've accidentally created a separate mobile account

In the verification process, you might have created a duplicate. Sometimes when you submit your verification code to Twitter, our database thinks it comes from a different address or phone number than the one you entered in your device settings page. This can happen if a digit is off.
To see if this is the case with your phone number, enter your phone number here to see if you accidentally created a duplicate account.

If an account is found, complete web sign up by clicking "continue," remove the number/address from the device settings page, and deactivate the duplicate account.

Important: If you don't delete your phone number from settings before deactivating the account, you won't be able to use the phone number in your existing account.

Your username or email address is associated with a deactivated account

When you deactivate an account, username and email address may be unavailable to use on another account for up to 30 days.

Your user name or email address is associated with a suspended account

User names and email addresses attached to suspended accounts are not available for use under any circumstances.

You've got another active account

You may have another active account on Twitter if your information is not available. To check by email address, try sending yourself a password reminder. To check for a username in use, try plugging the user name into this URL: http://twitter.com/usernamehere. If there is no account at that URL, the user name is most likely attached to a deactivated account, yours or someone else's. For phone numbers, see the top section for completing mobile sign up.

Nope, that's not it

If none of these is true for you, submit a request for help and we'll look into it.


Disabled email addresses: "Is your email address active?"

Submitted Mar 18, 2009 by crystal

Twitter disables invalid email addresses

Twitter sends notifications to the email address you signed up with based on your preferences.
For example, if you want an email letting you know when someone new follows you, we send it.
If your email or internet service provider rejects the email, or if we try to send an email to an invalid address, it bounces back to Twitter. When that bounce occurs, we add your address to a list of bouncing mail addresses and stop sending mail to you.

How do I know if my address is disabled?

If your address is disabled, you'll see a message in yellow box in your home page when you log in.

If you see a message from Twitter saying that we can't deliver your mail, it means we tried, and got rejected.
(Poor Twitter!)
We stop sending you mail as a result.

What can I do to help this?

Check your email address: perhaps you spelled something wrong, or a character or letter was missing. Have you logged into your email account lately? Maybe it's rejecting mail if you haven't used it in awhile.

Check your spam filters: make sure Twitter mail isn't going to spam, junk, or bulk mail folders

Change your email address: use a new email address to see if the problem persists. We recommend using a large domain such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail.

But my email address is valid!

If your email address is valid, then your internet service provider or email client may be blocking Twitter mail.
You may need to write you ISP, mail provider, or both to see why Twitter mail is being rejected.
This happens more with ISPs (like SBC, Comcast, etc.) than email providers (like Yahoo or Hotmail)
If this is the case, you will always be on the bounce list because your provider will never deliver mail from Twitter; you may want to try another email address (like a Gmail address) while you're working it out.

After you've verified with your ISP that Twitter mail isn't blocked, submit a support request with the details from your ISP and we'll remove you from the bounce list.
Please note that if mail is blocked, it will happen again and there is no point in removing you from the bounce list.

Submitted Jan 28, 2009 by crystal

Having trouble uploading a profile image to your account? You may also want to read about customizing your Twitter profile.

Check your file type

Twitter supports JPEG, GIF, and PNG file formats. We've had difficulties with animated GIFs, so we do not support them.

Note: we do not accept animated images and profile pictures with nudity will be removed.

Size Matters

Your picture must be larger than 48k but no more than 700k or we wont be able to upload it.
Before you give up, try another browser to see if it's a browser specific problem. If you still can't add an image, it may be a bug.

If you file a support request, tell us what browser and operating system you used, and attach a copy of your image so we can try it.

Chopping off parts of the image?

When you upload an avatar image but the sides or top/bottom are cut off, you are not experiencing a bug. Instead, your image height to width ratio is not equal. Avatars on Twitter are all displayed as small squares. This means that if you upload an image that is a rectangle and not a square, Twitter has to cut some of the image off so that it becomes a square:

To avoid this happening to your avatar, simply upload an image that has a height which is equal to, or almost equal to, the width of the image. Please note that even if you upload an image which has parts cut off, clicking the avatar will display the full size image without any distortion.

No more animated GIF support

Due to image processing failure and a potential content-type bug, we've removed animated GIF support for profile and background images. Many people have seen 'picture is too bug' errors for a seemingly normal image. All existing animated GIF images will be left as they are, but no new ones can be uploaded.

That's not it?

If you're still having problems, head over to our Known issues pages to see if there are open bugs regarding images.
We collect new cases and communicate about problems there.
If you don't see anything that resembles your problem, submit a request and select search from the drop down box-- we'll look into it for you. Don't forget to include your user name!

Submitted Jun 22, 2009 by crystal

Using Twitter Search

There are two places to find people and tweets on Twitter:

Find People: You can find other folks on Twitter by searching by username or public name in the Find People search.

Twitter Search: Twitter?s public search (found at search.twitter.com)
covers all other kinds of search options (like keyword, location, and
trending topic search). It also has advanced options like translation, search operators, and advanced searching.

All public accounts should be indexed within 24 hours of sign-up;
private accounts do not appear in search. We only index the last two
weeks of updates to appear in search.

Keeping search relevant

In order to keep your search results relevant, Twitter filters
search results for quality. Our search results won't include suspended
accounts or accounts that may jeopardize search quality. Material that
degrades search relevancy or creates a bad search experience for users
may be permanently removed.

I can't find my Tweets in search!

Best Practices

The Twitter Rules explain what behaviors are permitted on Twitter. In addition to these
rules, we've included some tips below to keep your content relevant
(and listed in Twitter search). We caution against aggressive behaviors
and suggest that you stay away from:

Repeatedly posting duplicate or near-duplicate content (links or tweets)

Abusing trending topics or hashtags (topic words with a # sign)

Sending automated tweets or replies

Using bots or applications to post similar messages based on keywords

Posting similar messages over multiple accounts

Aggressively following and un-following people

Twitter may automatically remove accounts engaging in these
behaviors from search (or even suspend in some cases) in order to
ensure the best experience for everyone.

Known Issues

Note: We do currently have a Known Issue affecting Twitter Search. Please see this page for more information!

Twitter indexes everything in real time, so search issues may come
up; if you think you're probably not filtered out based on the
information above, please check our known issues page and the Twitter Status Blog to see if we're working on bugs or having any difficulties with search presently.

Still not showing in search

If you can?t find yourself in search, rest assured that your
followers will still receive your updates, and if you post an @reply to
a specific user, these will be delivered to that user. If we're not
experiencing issues, your account is public, your tweets have been
posted for more than 24 hours, and you're still not listed, your tweets
have most likely been filtered out of our search index for quality
reasons.

Am I filtered from search forever?

No. If you are practicing the recommendations above, your account should eventually show in search.

Other questions:

What about using third-party applications?

As noted above, accounts may be filtered from search for posting
similar messages over several accounts. If you have allowed a
third-party application access to your account by giving out your
username and password, and this application is updating to lots of
accounts with similar or duplicate content, your account may be
filtered from search.

What about contests?

Sometimes, businesses host contests through their Twitter profile.
They may offer a prize for you retweeting an update, following a
particular user, or posting updates with a specific hashtag topic or
@reply. Please keep in mind that you are responsible for the updates
that you post to your Twitter account. If you repeatedly post
near-duplicate updates or duplicate links in order to enter contests,
you may be filtered from search. Your followers will still see your
updates.

(If you?re running a contest, check out this page on Twitter's Best Practices for Contests).

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

I found my Twitter profile in a Google search!

Twitter has a high Google search rank, so chances are, your profile will show up in a Google search.
Depending on the degree to which this bothers you, you can do several things:

change your real name

change your user name

protect your profile

Keep in mind that words in updates may also be indexed and come up in a search.

Why am I listed on Google after deleting or protecting my Twitter profile?

All public tweets posted before an account changed to protected will still be indexed in a public search engine, including http://search.twitter.com.
No tweets will show up after the time of protection.

Google and other search engines cache search results, which means that occasionally old information is still posted.
Although Twitter changes your settings immediately, these changes don't erase old information in Google's search index. Any/all old links appearing in a Google search thus lead to Twitter's truth-telling error page: "That page doesn't exist!"
The old links still appear because Google and other search engines may not have the current information updated in their search index. Until Google updates the new information and indexes your current status, links to the profile or updates posted prior to removal/protection remain online.

Send Google a request to remove the information.

Google will eventually index updated Twitter information.
If you'd like it done sooner, notify them post-haste.
If you can click on a link in a Google search, and it takes you to a dead/error page, you can request removal of that link using the URL removal tool.
Here's how:

Copy the URL you'd like removed from the site: http://twitter.com/username/statuses/12345678

Navigate to this page.

Paste in the Twitter link that you'd like removed

Submit your request.

You may be required to log in to your Google account.
If you don't have one, you may need to create one.
More information about removing your content from Google's search index is here.

Submitted Nov 09, 2009 by crystal

Twitter lets you find out what your friends are doing in whatever way makes the most sense for you.

There may be times when you are using an application(s) to send and receive Twitter updates.
If you are currently experiencing an issue with Twitter via a 3rd party application, please try to contact the support team at the 3rd party application, when applicable.

For example, if you are locked out of Twitterrific but can still access Twitter via the web, the issue may be originating from Twitterrific.

Here's a list of some of the help pages for the most widely-used apps for Twitter:

TweetDeck

Submitted Aug 24, 2009 by Charles

Is Twitter prompting you with a pop-up login box?Users experiencing this issue will encounter a pop-up box which states the following:

"A username and password are being requested by http://twitter.com. The site says: "TwitterAPI""

Entering correct login credentials will not make the box go away. The only way to make the box disappear is to click 'Cancel' or the close button in the upper right corner.

Have you subscribed to any RSS feeds of Twitter accounts?

If so, please remove them from your browser's bookmark bar. If you're using Safari, go to Safari>Preferences>RSS and set 'check for updates' to 'never.'

If you are still experiencing this error message, please write the following information in the comments below:

Your username

The URL where you experienced this pop-up

What you were doing when this pop-up appeared

Whether or not you experienced this pop-up while mousing over a link

(if you are using a browser that supports add-ons) What add-ons you currently have installed on your browser

(optional) A link to a screen shot of your pop-up box

Your account is not being phished/compromised.

We are still in the preliminary stage of identifying the causes of this problem. Your comments and details will help us narrow in on what exactly is causing this issue. We do not have an estimated date for the fix. We advise you check back on this page in the future for updates about the situation. You may also keep an eye on our status blog. We apologize for any inconvenience this problem may cause and we thank you for your patience!

Comments

cordmc

Your username--Cordmc

What you were doing when this pop-up appeared--reading email

Whether or not you experienced this pop-up while mousing over a link--no

Aug-24 2009 17:28.

breebove

Your username

username: breebove

website: bankofamerica.com

What you were doing when this pop-up appeared: closing window/tab in Safari

Whether or not you experienced this pop-up while mousing over a link: no

(if you are using a browser that supports add-ons) What add-ons you currently have installed on your browser - none

(optional) A link to a screen shot of your pop-up box

Aug-24 2009 17:56.

salaxx

user: salaxx

using Safari, not doing anything special.

have been getting this popup for several days. Nothing makes it go away.

email: dsalaxnunn@gmail.com.

Can you fix it please?

Aug-24 2009 18:29.

flshdncasspants

Your username: flshdncasspants

The URL where you experienced this pop-up: n/a

What you were doing when this pop-up appeared: safari- not doing anything in particular

Whether or not you experienced this pop-up while mousing over a link: no

(if you are using a browser that supports add-ons) What add-ons you currently have installed on your browser: n/a

(optional) A link to a screen shot of your pop-up box

Nothing makes it stop. SO irritating.

Aug-25 2009 02:37.

rheaevers

rheaevers

mozilla firefox

i was on twitter, already logged in when it appeared and continuously reappeared despite submitting log in details.

no

please sort this out, it only stays away after pressing ESC a couple of hundred times, and then comes back when you click on something that moves the page.

Aug-25 2009 03:56.

kespanthers

Username: KESPanthers

URL: http://www.hayscisd.net/schools/kes/index.html

This message occurs on entering this website. Website has a twitter widget on home page.

not experience issue yet when mousing over a link

This has been experienced by a variety of visitors to this site. I have experienced it on both Mac and PCs using Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Add on's include Active X, shockwave, flash

Aug-25 2009 16:00.

afblocker

username - afblocker

seems to pop up randomly..

it happens a couple times a day.

i had a twitter widget and deleted it after this kept popping up... but it the message hasn't gone away.

on my mac the message says "Enter your name and password to update the RSS feed. To update the RSS feed "http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss", you need to log in to the area "Twitter API" on twitter.com. Your password will be sent in clear text."

Please make this stop!

Aug-25 2009 20:39.

otherlisa

username - otherlisa

Happens whenever I have Safari open, and it happens constantly

Only things I've added lately are the new version of Flash player and a tr.im NW aplet

Aug-26 2009 00:58.

preetisud

Your username - preetisud

The URL where you experienced this pop-up - twitter.com

What you were doing when this pop-up appeared - everytime i sign in i get the pop-up multiple times. Every time i go back to my twitter tab it just comes back again and again. I m kinda tired and fedup with it.

Whether or not you experienced this pop-up while mousing over a link: Nope

(if you are using a browser that supports add-ons) What add-ons you currently have installed on your browser

(optional) A link to a screen shot of your pop-up box: its exactly the same as u have put up above.

Aug-27 2009 04:22.

Shann_Leigh

Shann_Leigh
I was already logged in to Twitter the first time I saw this pop-up. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing when it popped up for the first time. Now it pops up all the time, even when I'm NOT logged in to Twitter.
I have a Mac
the browser I use is Safari. I don't think I have any add-ons installed on my browser. I don't know how to post a link a screen shot of the pop-up, but it says exactly the same thing that afblocker's does. This has been going on for 2 days now. It doesn't matter if I enter my user name
password, or if I press cancel-it always comes back! It's incredibly annoying
I'm worried that it's presenting some kind of security risk.

Aug-27 2009 22:31.

whyohyou

Your username - whyohyou

The URL where you experienced this pop-up - twitter.com

What you were doing when this pop-up appeared - nothing, it pops up everytime any page loads on twitter

Whether or not you experienced this pop-up while mousing over a link - nope

(if you are using a browser that supports add-ons) What add-ons you currently have installed on your browser - twitterfox

Aug-30 2009 22:50.

housecollective

Your username: housecollective

The URL where you experienced this pop-up http://www.myhouseyourhouse.net ;

What you were doing when this pop-up appeared - Was streaming music and checking the shoutcast status server of the radio station

Whether or not you experienced this pop-up while mousing over a link - No

(if you are using a browser that supports add-ons) What add-ons you currently have installed on your browser None

(optional) A link to a screen shot of your pop-up box http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/5259/picture5o.png

Aug-30 2009 23:58.

trends_de

Same here. http://www.twitter.com/trends_de

Regards http://www.twitter-trends.de

Aug-31 2009 10:26.

Stelabug

username -
Stelabug

seems to pop up randomly..

Very often.

on my mac the message says "Enter your name and password to update the RSS feed. To update the RSS feed "http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss",

Aug-31 2009 10:44.

GenoaJenn

Your username
----> GenoaJenn

The URL where you experienced this pop-up
---> N/A

What you were doing when this pop-up appeared
----> Reading Email -- Browser launched from a link in an email, but not for Twitter.

Whether or not you experienced this pop-up while mousing over a link
----> No.

(if you are using a browser that supports add-ons) What add-ons you currently have installed on your browser
---->Yes. [click link to PDF] http://files.me.com/sierra.creek.grafx/b8ix8m

(optional) A link to a screen shot of your pop-up box:
----> [click link to PDF] http://files.me.com/sierra.creek.grafx/gns3kr

Aug-31 2009 10:52.

famblykittens

innerpuppie

Submitted Apr 01, 2009 by crystal

Hotmail and MSN have been removed from contact import options.

There is no current timeframe for adding this feature.

Please find people with other methods.

Comments

crystal
Twitter

So far I have these folks listed as having problems importing hotmail/MSN contacts:

ZhongRu
mattybrine
jourzua
adam_harvey
mjcharrison
ien_h
onyxxx
azdivad
kaayleigh
qybn
kennybruin
jesbreslaw
thecjstyle
natalietkachuk
seb3255
sarahwilliams48
lwhitneyb
ronaldhuisman
ca_rissa
cyn_bad
smtourk
ronaldhuisman

If you are also affected and your email address is connected to your Twitter account, just leave your user name and we'll look up your email address. Thanks!

Apr-01 2009 12:37.

missyEL

missyEL

thanks :)

Apr-01 2009 15:51.

sare_pare

sare_pare

thank you!

Apr-02 2009 04:36.

BabyRomi

BabyRomi

Thnks muuuuchly :) xx

Apr-02 2009 05:08.

therock7

is this fixed yet? I too can't get it to work?

Apr-02 2009 06:03.

djdouglas2002

ditto. I'm just getting up and running on this and having my contact list would be helpful...:(

Apr-02 2009 08:52.

crystal
Twitter

We're still working on the MSN/Hotmail contacts guys. Thanks for your patience. In the meantime, you can invite a list of email addresses here:

Submitted Dec 18, 2009 by ginger

If you're seeing a warning about malware or spam when you try to:

Tweet a particular link

Add a particular link to your profile
Visit a particular link through Twitter's URL Shortener, http://twt.tl

. . . this means that the link matches a database of potentially harmful URLs. Harmful sites include web forgeries ("phishing" sites), sites that download malicious software onto your computer, or spam sites that request personal information. This could also mean the website was compromised by a hacker at some point, and the hacker embedded malware onto the website.

How do I clean up my website and get it un-flagged?

If you manage the website of the reported URL, please:

1. Check to see if the URL is a suspected malware or phishing site

If you manage the website of the blocked URL, you can view Google's diagnostic report on the URL by visiting this link:

Submitted Sep 15, 2009 by Charles

There is still a known issue where not all users are appearing in Find People. We're working to include all users in this index and to get new users into Find People faster.

If a search for your username in Find People currently returns no results, it is likely for one of these three reasons:

Your account is less than 24 hours old. It can take up to 24 hours to be indexed into Find People. Our engineers are working to reduce this delay.

You have no followers. Currently, you must have at least one follower in order to be indexed in Find People.
Your account has not met Twitter Search quality guidelines. If your recent Tweets do not appear in Twitter Search, your updates may have been filtered for quality reasons, and you may also not be appearing in Find People. Please see this search help page to see why accounts may be filtered from Twitter Search.

Thanks for being patient as we improve the Find People search engine!

---

UPDATE: 03/02/10 - We did some maintenance work on Find People search. This should be resolved this week.

UPDATE: 02/08/10 - We are still in the process of improving our Find People search. We hope to release these improvements soon.

UPDATE: 12/18/09 - We've fixed one bug related to this Known Issue. If you're still not in Find People, please review the updated information above about potential causes.

UPDATE: 11/02/09 - This issue has been unstable for a while now. Our engineers are devoting some serious time right now to fixing the problem with Find People search once and for all. We hope to have a fix early this week and a permanent solution in the next couple months. Please watch this page for updates. Thanks!

Comments

hello_robin

username: hello_robin

date started occuring: I posted my first tweet on Sept. 11th and as far as I've known I've never shown up

Sep-15 2009 14:51.

hello_robin

I probably should add that neither my user name or actual name are showing up, it almost sounded like I was talking about my tweets and I am not.

Sep-15 2009 14:54.

pojojennylee

Username: pojojennylee

Date: problem started to occur Sept. 15 around 5:45 p.m. A friend tried to find me, but couldn't. The thing is I follow his twitter account. I've had this account since Sept. 9, 2009.

Sep-15 2009 15:09.

pojojennylee

Username: pojojennylee

I should also add my friend could not find me in the "Find people" by using my real name or my username.

Sep-15 2009 15:10.

womb4improve

Username: womb4improve

Full name: womb for improvement

Joined on 13 September, 9:59am, have never appeared in Find People search either for username or full name.

Sep-15 2009 15:12.

raloveshayden

username: raloveshayden

joined sept. 14

Sep-15 2009 16:02.

pro17twit

username: Pro17tweets

date: September 15, 2009

Sep-15 2009 16:57.

CornucopiaValpo

not showing in search function with either name or username. Has been an issue since sign up last week. Thanks.

Sep-15 2009 17:23.

fleckingrecords

username: fleckingrecords

date: August 14th

Sep-15 2009 18:33.

Uhlenhaker

username:uhlenhaker

date: 9/11/09

Sep-15 2009 18:50.

ContestQueen

I am not sure when I realized I was "invisible" but it's been months.

if you search for Carolyn Wilman you get the account I closed.

If you search for Contest Queen (@ContestQueen) you get someone else.

Sep-15 2009 19:00.

ebookpie

username: ebookpie

Date: September 10, 2009

Sep-15 2009 19:19.

askwomen

username - askwomen

this has been happening for at least 6 weeks

Sep-15 2009 19:41.

a_rays

username - a_rays --- signed up a couple of days ago and have never shown up

username - amy_renaye --- signed up a couple of days ago and have never shown up

username -gon_ball --- signed up a couple of days ago and have never shown up

Sep-15 2009 20:29.

mattdusk

Username: therealmattdusk

this has been happening since last week.

Sep-15 2009 20:37.

mattdusk

Username: therealmattdusk

this has been happening since Sept 8 2009

Sep-15 2009 20:37.

theVanessaSonya

I have been a member for months and I still do not show up in "Find People" under my user name or actual name

Sep-15 2009 21:14.

TaylorMadeJ

TaylorMadeJ

September 15th

Sep-15 2009 21:51.

NickT80

I do not show up...hello....

Sep-15 2009 21:55.

maennerherzen

My user name and actual name does not show in "Find People"

Sep-16 2009 02:26.

PodnieksStudio

User name: PodnieksStudio.

Today I noticed that my name doesn`t show in Find people.

Sep-16 2009 03:08.

heidident76

My user name and actual name do not appear in "Find People". I joined today so this problem started as soon as I joined!

Sep-16 2009 04:54.

bboddum

My username and real name does not show up in people search. username: bboddum Real: Bettina Boddum

Same problem with birte quist. Username : birteq

Sep-16 2009 05:25.

justinljhooker

My username and actual name do not appear in "Find People". I noticed this today.

Sep-16 2009 05:28.

ChipKawalsingh

My user name and actual name has never been coming up at all under find people! Had a few e mails from people asking to find me....

Sep-16 2009 05:34.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Oct 02, 2009 by Lukester

Are not seeing some of your Tweets in Twitter Search? This page will help you figure out why! Please check to see if any of your Tweets are in search.

Go to Twitter Search and type "from:username" into the search box, but replace 'username' with your username. For example, here's how @ginger searched for her Tweets:

If your Tweets are showing up here, then you're in Twitter search! Yay!

I checked, and ALL my Tweets are missing :(

There are a few reasons why all your Tweets might not be showing at all in public search:

Your Tweets aren't recent: We only index Tweets for about two weeks. If your most recent Tweet is older than that, please Tweet again and check.

You're a *very* new account: It can take a few days for new accounts to be indexed by search.
Your email is bouncing: If you log in and see a big red warning when you're at twitter.com that says your email address is having delivery issues, please take the steps to fix it! We want to show you in search and we need you to fix your email.

You are being filtered out of search due to a quality issue: In order to provide the best search experience for users, Twitter automatically filters search results for quality. Some accounts may be automatically filtered as a result of rules violations or activity that degraded Twitter search. For more detailed information on this issue, please click here.

Submitted Mar 05 by Charles

Some users are witnessing follower counts which do not accurately reflect the number of users displayed on the Followers page. For example, if your account displays a follower count of 13 but when you navigate to the Followers page only 12 are displayed, your account is affected by this issue.

Currently we do not have a work around to fix this problem and Support agents are unable to fix your account for you. For this reason we would appreciate it if you could leave a comment below rather than submit a help request. Your comments will help us gather valuable information about how many users are affected. In the comments section below please include the following information:

Username

Follower or following count

Actual # of displayed followers/followings

We will place updates below when we have more information for you.

Thank you for your patience!

Sincerely,
The Twitter Support Team

Comments

leenys

@leenys

3 follower count

2 actual followers

Mar-05 2010 15:03.

Inplaceoffear

@Inplaceoffear

4 follower count

2 actual

Mar-05 2010 17:40.

moabenjaminsson

@moabenjaminsson

23

22

Mar-06 2010 07:58.

georgby

Right after I joined Tweetglide, I received a lot of emails about people following me. When I checked my Twitter account this number was at 94 followers. Most of these people I followed back. The next day I checked my email, and I had another 15 followers, I did not follow these ones back. Day three, another 7 or 8 followers. If you look at my account you will see that I am following 201 people, and I only have 93 followers. When I first installed the Tweetglide software, I had 21 following, 23 followers. In any case I have not followed anyone in the last three days, which does not account for the 80 plus people that I did not authorize.

Mar-06 2010 11:16.

stylesensation

Today I had a email from a twitter to follow me, I verified pressed the button to allow the person to follow me, however when I immediatly checked my followers the new follower I activated was not listed.

This has happend to me many times before and its very annoying because the people who request to follow me think I have rejected their request. What can I do to recover those requests and How can I avoid it happening in future. I hvae less followers then I should have due to this technical problem.

Mar-06 2010 11:55.

hwei_jyun

hwei_jyun

9 followers

7 actual followers

Mar-06 2010 16:22.

lslukas

lslukas

4 followers

2 actual followers (1 + 1 pending)

Mar-06 2010 17:37.

Alori_Joh

@Alori_Joh

I received several more followers today than I had yesterday but the number of followers didn't increase.

Followers displayed- 249

Actual followers- unsure

Mar-06 2010 18:35.

brindsingh

@brindsingh

'53' followers

52 actual followers

Mar-07 2010 05:00.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Jan 21 by eddie

Are your follower/following/lists counts fluctuating every time you refresh? For example, it might say 787 followers at one moment, and upon page reload it says 792.

If you are, then you're experiencing a known issue we're investigating. Please comment on the thread with your username and any other symptoms you may be experiencing.

Thanks for your patience!

Twitter Support

UPDATE: 3/02/10: We are continuing to investigate this issue. If you are still experiencing this bug, pls indicate this in the comments below.

UPDATE: 2/09/10: We are continuing to investigate this issue. If you are still experiencing this bug, pls indicate this in the comments below.

UPDATE: 2/01/10: We are continuing to investigate this issue. If you are still experiencing this bug, pls indicate this in the comments below.

Comments

SevenBlunts

im having the same problem. 1 min it will say 0 followers 0 following then come back then nothing again. FIX IT!!!

Jan-21 2010 12:08.

kazzaloo78

Im having this problem. I get 0 following 0 followers, then it will come up with correct amount. But if i click on the list of follwers or following i have the button to click to follow them. Even though i already am. Its getting very frustrating. Please fix it soon. Im having to refresh lots of times to get correct amount but then if i click and come back its all gone again.

Jan-21 2010 12:16.

eugeniague

I'm experiencing this, it says "0 followers" or "0 following". When it says the correct count, I click to see the Following List and it appears to be blank. I'm having this problem since yesterday.

Jan-21 2010 12:22.

KidneyRegistry

Yes. Help! in addition to the "0" following or followers it happens with lists too. Also when I do refresh, sometimes it shows that I'm following more people than I think (i.e 10,676 v.s 10,276 actual) . This causes my ratio to exceed the 1.1 to 1 follow limit and I'm unable to follow more. We are a charitable org and rely on twitter to heavily to promote our lifesaving work facilitating Kidney transplants. Hope you can help us fix this soon. Thanks! Joe

Jan-21 2010 12:37.

ArtMusicLife

My counts have been fluctuating for the last 2 days. Today a new wrinkle, even when the count is correct my following and followers pages are sometimes blank. This is effecting all 3 counts.

Jan-21 2010 12:49.

scvillas

Last night I had over 3000 followers. This morning the number went down to just over 1,400. What happened? Please help!

Jan-21 2010 12:52.

AndyWhyteUK

I am have the same problems as everyone else here.

My followers list seems to fluctuate between 0 660 and 678.

I noticed this started happening very soon after I had clicked through on one of those 'truetwit' validation things.

Jan-21 2010 13:03.

ilkyldz

I'm having the same problem for 2 days

My followers list and my own following list fluctuate between 0-140

My list section fluctuates as well

Each
section keep changing every time I refresh

Hope you can fix it soon

Thanks!

ilkyldz.

Jan-21 2010 13:56.

barenakedladies

This is happening for us as well, plus it seems that not all followers are getting our tweets in their timelines.

Jan-21 2010 14:40.

Smith_W_6079

Same. Numbers bouncing back and forth on every refresh.

Jan-21 2010 15:19.

simonsayscook

I'm having the same problem -- as if the counter is not advancing and then it goes back down.

Jan-21 2010 15:57.

sheconsulting

I keep getting new follower pings via email, yet my follower count only fluctuates between 309-312; it's been this was for a few days. thanks! esta

Jan-21 2010 16:33.

Guy_Vincent

My (sent) tweet numbers have increased by more than 3 x. From approximately 6,000 to over 19,000 tweets within 1 day. Is this issue being addressed?

Thank you. @Guy_Vincent

Jan-21 2010 17:31.

JustinWoolley

Yep, having the same probs, the numbers are all over the place and come up in a variety of combinations. It also displays at my end that I'm unfollowing people and then following them again. I've been affected for the last couple of days. Best of luck in finding a solution. Cheers, Justin (@JustinWoolley).

Jan-21 2010 18:21.

AnnaGoesRAWR

The people I follow aren't showing up correctly.
I unfollowed some people, and followed some new people. However, a few people I unfollowed are still on my list [of the people I follow]. I had already unfollowed them, but they still appear. The new people I follow aren't showing up neither. Help? D:

Thankyou! (:

Jan-21 2010 18:44.

LeaderChat

Hi, I've been experiencing exactly what you are describing. Just started today. Not sure what is causing it. Thank you for looking into it. @LeaderChat

Jan-21 2010 19:19.

truevibe

I only have read the first post...my problem is similar. When i refresh the browser for the first time my numbers of followers goes to X-1...then if i refresh again it goes to X+1. ie i have 48 followers if i refresh it appears 47...if i refresh again i get 48...and so on.

Cheers
@truevibe

Jan-21 2010 20:23.

mgyerman

I am constantly gaining followers and then losing them. I wondered if it was because some of the people who followed me were on the more commercial side..and then they unfollowed me. But I think it happens to frequently for that.

Jan-21 2010 20:35.

snowandstars

hi - the number of people i am following goes up and down by about 20 or two dozen every time i refresh. doesn't seem to happen to who is following me, but to who i follow.
have suggestion on another topic too, will look for where to make it...

Jan-21 2010 21:07.

redBLACKlights

tweet count is under 2000, when i was above the 2000th tweet already..

Jan-21 2010 22:08.

TheMsKitty

I'm having this problem too, the count on both following & followers changes to 0 then when i refresh it changes back to normal, and i'm also having a problem with a follower who recently has just started following me, she suddenly disappears off my followers list, and the follower count just reflects one follower missing, but shes hasn't unfollowed and shes still receiving my tweets and as soon as i refresh she reappears.

Jan-21 2010 23:15.

cycinema

Hi.

Similar problem here. My followers count never hits 0 - but it constantly jumps between two different numbers depending on from which page (my tweets, my home page, my followers etc.) I view it. So, for example it will show 118 followers, until I click on my followers page and it will suddenly shift to 117 followers. It only fluctuates by an increment of one. This has been happening for a few weeks now.

Thanks.

@cycinema

Jan-22 2010 07:28.

KidneyRegistry

Update: Today I no longer see "0" counts but Like @cycinema said "Similar problem here. My followers count never hits 0 - but it constantly jumps between two different numbers depending on from which page (my tweets, my home page, my followers etc.) I view it." Hope you'll be able to get this problem under controll soon. Kind Regards. Joe

Jan-22 2010 07:35.

raghavarajubv

hahaha, me same with all the above! today early morning(indian time) my followers were 500; now some're missing(luckily,loss is only 2 people,i.e.,i had 498 now. i wonder where they had been to(are they safe?). "thanks for this opportunity"(after seeing the above commentors my worries automatically disappeared.but i need your help to get cured)

Jan-22 2010 08:06.

adventuregirl

Hey Guys- I'm one of those people with fluctuating numbers. They're all over the map! Thanks for your helping us with this! Happy Friday. Stef

Jan-22 2010 08:12.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Mar 01 by Charles

Over the weekend, many users noticed missing tweets which they had posted to their accounts. Specifically, users are reporting missing tweets posted on February 28th and a bit less on February 27th. We updated our Status Blog with a post regarding this issue: http://status.twitter.com/post/419501875/reports-of-missing-tweets . If an event like this occurs in the future, please be sure to check the Status Blog.

If your account is missing tweets from this time period, we would appreciate your comments below. Although your tweets may be missing from your profile, they are not lost forever. Our engineers are in the process of correcting this error and should have the problem resolved soon. If you are experiencing this issue please leave a single comment below. We will place updates at the bottom of this page when we have more information about this problem.

Thank you!

-The Twitter Support Team

Comments

minnastardust

Hi! This is @minnastardust . My tweets are missing from a period between 9:38 AM Feb 28th - this morning.

Mar-01 2010 13:50.

Cocktail_Kitten

@Cocktail_Kitten here. My tweets from roughly Feb 28 2:30 a.m. PST to 2:00 a.m. PST March 2st are missing.

Mar-01 2010 15:45.

Cocktail_Kitten

Oops. that would be March 1st, not 2nd

Mar-01 2010 15:45.

NahlaKitty

three of my tweets are missing

Mar-01 2010 16:28.

electrikkemily

@electrikkemily - missing several tweets from february 28. thanks!

Mar-01 2010 16:36.

Matt_Hurley

@matt_hurley - I am missing my tweets from 2/28, hope to get some feedback.

Mar-01 2010 18:25.

CheesecakeDFW

@CheesecakeDFW - missing only the tweets directed to me (mentions) from 2/27, on...

Mar-02 2010 05:46.

NickDingillo

@NickDingillo. Yup, my tweets from that weekend are also missing

Mar-02 2010 12:32.

albertcolor

My tweets are missing as well

Mar-03 2010 19:19.

albertcolor

Oh, additionally, my web feed is not updating http://www.albertcolor.com/AC/Follow_AlbertColor.html

Mar-03 2010 19:22.

ZanaPredaK

I miss my tweets. Please restore them on this account: zanapredak. Many thanks.

Mar-05 2010 19:03.

kelphotography

i m missing tweets i send out
on my mobile.. and am out of
town, am very frustrated!! can this get helped ??? argh!!

Mar-06 2010 14:33.

MrsMakk

Same thing happened to my account that weekend. It has happened this weekend too, starting last night (March 5th) and is still happening. I have access to them all online from my pc but there problem is on my iphone. (Twitteriffic) My husband uses the Twitteriffic on the iphone too and has no problems. Any ideas?

Mar-06 2010 19:07.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Feb 25 by Charles

Many users have recently complained about clicking on various retweet tabs on Twitter.com and having those tabs fail to load tweets. We are aware of the problem and it has been reported to our engineers. We will try to address this issue as soon as possible but at this time we have no further information about an estimated date for the fix. When we have more information about this problem, we will place updates at the bottom of this article.

If your retweet tabs are slow to load or do not load, please leave a comment below with the following information:

Your username

Which retweet tab will not load

Thank you for your help!

Sincerely,
The Twitter Support Team

Please do not comment more than once. Thanks!

UPDATE: 3/02/10 CM - We are close to having this issue resolved. Hang tight and we'll post another update when this issue is fixed.

Comments

Steelhead3686

Retweet shows it's loading but never loads. Also, a few weeks ago when it did load it wouldn't load the "my tweets retweeted" part.

Feb-25 2010 21:42.

onlinefan

retweets by you tries to load but doesn't.
also my tweets retweed don't always show those who have retweed me.

Feb-25 2010 22:57.

leanasidhe

leanasidhe

"my tweets retweeted"

Feb-26 2010 07:28.

KarenBC

KarenBC

'your tweets retweeted ' tab not loading

Feb-26 2010 12:01.

chubbycrowrecds

chubbycrowrecds

'retweets by you' never loads

Feb-27 2010 13:15.

CathiCarol

"Retweets By You" is broken.

"Retweets by Others" (default) tab takes too long to load.

Feb-28 2010 01:58.

Valeriotta_

Username: Valeriotta_

My Twitter home page doesn't work, it doesn't show the tweets of my following.

Feb-28 2010 03:43.

jerry3741

retweet only works a few times and then stops

Feb-28 2010 10:09.

Chiboard

@Chiboard

Tweets of my followers doesn't update on my home since 12hours

Thanks you.

Feb-28 2010 12:43.

Zeckelzwerg

Zeckelzwerg

The twitter homepage doesn?t show the tweets/re-tweets of my following. I also can?t read my tweets/re-tweets on the persons I?m following!

Feb-28 2010 13:04.

thevoicefan

retweets tabs doesn't work a few days ago

Mar-01 2010 05:43.

Gappi

@gappi

The general Retweets tab doesn't load.

Mar-01 2010 14:02.

breeep

@breeep

For awhile it was just my "Retweets by you" but now I can't see any retweets at all. So, it's my Retweet button/tab on my homepage. It'll show it's loading, and then just stop.

Mar-01 2010 21:39.

quotegarden

@quotegarden

My "Your tweets, retweeted" tab will not open for approximately the past 2 weeks, neither in IE nor Firefox.

Mar-02 2010 07:09.

alsassociation

@alsassociation

in IE, no retweet tabs at all

in FF, not "your tweets, retweeted"

Mar-02 2010 12:36.

mlmcw

@mlmcw

Sometimes the "Retweets" button won't load. When it does, the "Retweets By You" tab won't load.

Mar-02 2010 15:35.

imackinn

In chrome, the retweets link does not work

Mar-02 2010 16:19.

CvilleBubble

Nothing at the "Retweets" button will load.

Mar-02 2010 16:47.

americangirl696

When I press the "Retweets" button, it shows that it's loading. Then it stops, but the Retweets page never shows up.

Mar-02 2010 18:34.

satonakahalu96

@satonakahalu96

'Retweets By You'

It sometimes brings me to the

Twitter is over capacity.

Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again. page as well.

Mar-02 2010 20:14.

loni_rokz

the retweets by you takes forever to load and i have a fast comuter=[

Mar-02 2010 22:48.

loni_rokz

the retweets by you takes forever to load and i have a fast comuter=[

Mar-02 2010 22:48.

dewarrenmoses

I can't Retweet my tweet?

Mar-03 2010 01:13.

PINKme_pretty

I just joined twitter and i cnt retweet at all, it just says reply..what do i do?

Mar-03 2010 01:54.

cohenquote

@cohenquote

I click the "Retweets" tab, it shows that it's loading but the page never opens. This has often happened before, but the tab has always started working again after a while and a few tries. But today I haven't been able to open the retweets tab even once...

Mar-03 2010 11:43.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Feb 16 by Charles

We are currently aware of some users who are missing user meta-data beneath their retweeted tweets on the "Your tweets, retweeted" tab. If you notice this irregularity, please comment below so we can get a feel for how many users are currently affected.

Our engineers are aware of the issue and will have it fixed as soon as possible.

Thanks!
The Twitter Support Team

---

Comments

las8705

I just can't view the retweets tab at all! I click on it and nothing happens!

Feb-20 2010 05:21.

nejnyy

I'm having this problem.

Feb-21 2010 13:09.

JNJCOMPUTERS

I cant update any thing wont let me post. Please let me know what up. Jimm_quinn@yahoo.com

Feb-21 2010 17:30.

DashUnderliner

I can't see Tweets Retweeted by me at all--click tab, see other info. Been like that for about a day.

Feb-21 2010 19:57.

f1peter27

I can go on the "Your tweets, retweeted" tab - however none of my tweets that have been retweeted are displayed!

P.S I know at least two of my tweets have been retweeted.

Feb-22 2010 15:08.

EdenBlessing

as far as I can tell, the whole retweets portion is down, been unable to load it without "twitter is over capacity" error for a couple days.

shortly before that I was seeing errors with older ones being unavailable (anything older than the last few minutes it seemed, or just one message)

Feb-22 2010 16:57.

RLReed777

Mine broke Too

Feb-22 2010 19:53.

voiceofbreeze

I am having this problem

Feb-22 2010 21:20.

unstoppablystar

im with f1peter27. because, i know i got more than one that my tweet has been retweeted. so, i dont know why it said i didnt have any which its not true. so, please fix that issue asap. thanks.

Feb-23 2010 03:03.

5xStarChick

Alot of people retweeted my tweets & i cant see nothin it looks like no one retweeted nothin..ugghh can you fix dat please

Feb-23 2010 05:20.

tbpHFX

I'm also with f1peter27. because, I know more than one of my tweets has been retweeted. Thanks.

f1peter27

I can go on the "Your tweets, retweeted" tab - however none of my tweets that have been retweeted are displayed!

P.S I know at least two of my tweets have been retweeted.

Feb-22 2010 03:08 pm.

Feb-23 2010 13:41.

luizbueno

My retweeted tweets also do not appear at all.

Feb-23 2010 17:05.

RealDiamond_

Can Click on Retweets by you but nothing happens . The others work just fine

Feb-23 2010 18:40.

anneeke

I notice that whenever I am retweeted, they are not listed. Not all of them are missing but 2 out of 3

Feb-24 2010 00:29.

AppInsanity

I have not been able to view the "your tweets retweeted" tab for about 4-5 days, it spins and stops but never updates the content area below the tabs

Feb-25 2010 05:34.

1JoolsW

The retweet button is not working for me either : (

Feb-25 2010 09:56.

foreverflavor

yes i noticed yesterday the same thing 4 me....the my tweets retweeted tab loads but does not change....

Feb-26 2010 20:47.

bramcollins

Good....

Feb-27 2010 05:29.

MinervaHandbags

mine broke too. ...please let us know when fixed. I need tos see who has retweeted. thanks

Feb-27 2010 06:35.

tbpHFX

Still broken :-(

Feb-27 2010 14:43.

pinkpodster

Some of the tweets I know were retweeted are not showing up in the list. I often use Tweetie and Tweetdeck if that helps.

Feb-28 2010 09:44.

Edwardnet

Hi Edwardnet here I'm missing my timeline and it looks like it happen early morning hours - I cant see timeline please fix

Feb-28 2010 10:09.

DANCINGWTQUOTES

I have a whole bunch of retweets not showing up in my "Your tweets, retweeted tab." There a few there but probably only 20% in total, so am missing a lot

Feb-28 2010 11:59.

sunshinemyson

sunshinemyson I have not current tweets coming in. Last one was last night. Please let me now what is going on.

Feb-28 2010 12:25.

alexacastrato

I can't find my problem anywhere. I get this ANNOYING ASS BOX on my account that blocks 2 tweets on my screen ANYTIME ANYONE I DON'T KNOW IS RETWEETED. FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUCK THIS.

The box is HUGE and says "WONDERING WHO THIS IS? Someone you follow thought this was worth retweeting, which is why you are seeing it in your Home timeline." There's no option to turn it fucking off, it only says LEARN MORE.

I DONT WANT TO LEARN MORE I WANT IT GONE

Feb-28 2010 16:21.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Feb 01 by laurag

Is that a bug in your cache?

We are currently aware of caching issues with direct messages where count may be off.

If you notice this irregularity, please comment below so we can get a feel for how many users are currently affected.

Count is inaccurate: your sidebar count may be misleading

We're currently looking into reports of direct message counts being off.
Thus far, it seems that people who've deleted direct messages aren't seeing the sidebar number reflect that change.

For example, if you have 15 messages and delete 13 of them, the sidebar count still says 15 though you only see two.
Please allow the system to refresh at least 48 hours.
If you still see this issue after two days, please comment below and provide the following information:

Real DM count in your inbox

The number displayed next DM timeline.

If you have recently deleted DMs, tell us approximately how many.

Date you first saw this issue.

Direct messages function exactly like tweets. When a DM is deleted, it is erased from the the sender's and the recipient's timelines.
If you notice DMs disappearing from you inbox, that means that the user who sent you the message deleted the DM from their Sent timeline.

For more information about direct messaging, please see our help article: http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14606

Thanks!
The Twitter Support Team

If you're having trouble accessing your DM timeline, that's a separate issue, please go here: http://help.twitter.com/forums/31935/entries/106296

---

UPDATE: 02/02/10 - We are still looking into this issue. Please continue to leave your comments below. Thank you!

UPDATE: 02/09/10 - This is a low-priority bug.
If you HUGE discrepancies related to your DM inbox, please let us know by leaving your comments below. Thank you!

UPDATE: 3/2/10 - We are still working on correcting this problem, and we appreciate your patience. -EP

Comments

PapaDingo

Hi. I see a DIRECT MESSAGE count of 1. I went to messages and there are none. I have not used direct messages that I am aware of and there is nothing in either send or received.

Has something been sent to me and now has been deleted and the num hasn't updated possibly?

I don't check my twitter every day, so there is always the possibility that a message was deleted within the last 48 hrs without my seeing it.

I'll check this over the next 48 hours and let you know if it is still an incorrect numb...

Feb-01 2010 14:18.

BeAuTy_DOLL

IM HAVING THE SAME PROBLEM WITH THE PERSON ABOVE.
I DONT HAVE ANY DIRECT MESSAGES AND IT KEEP SHOWING "1"

Feb-01 2010 15:59.

pixiesoap

I have a DM count of 604. The other day I sat there trying to delete them ALL. Don't ask me how I let it build so far, lol.

I thought I deleted them all and have had a few I received via email but cannot access on twitter. When I click on my direct message link it only turns brown and doesn't let me go to them.

Feb-01 2010 17:44.

WookieStyle

ever since I started using twitter, my DM count has been off by 2..... when I've got them all completely deleted out of received and sent, it says 2..... otherwise, the actual number of messages in my file, are always off by 2... at least it's consistent..lol

Feb-01 2010 20:44.

_JohnBlaze

I Have A Direct Message Count Of 144 And It Only Shows About 20 And Im Trying To See The Rest Of My Messages

Feb-01 2010 21:48.

JuliaAWhite

My direct messages have been off from the start. First it was showing 2 and now it is solidly showing 4. I have no messages and it still shows 4. Thanks!

Feb-02 2010 04:21.

bloggi85

I have a DM count of 8 but only 1 appearing.

Feb-02 2010 05:08.

Mzz_Ky

My DM count is incorrect!!!! It says i have 16 DM but when i check my DM's it's empty...!!! what do i do???

Feb-02 2010 06:34.

YehoshuaKelley

DM count of 1, but none in inbox.

Feb-02 2010 11:00.

pennykeating

Can delete my messages but the count stays the same.

Feb-02 2010 13:57.

DHamFan11

my message count says 1 and there are none in it. i've refreshed many times and still wont go away

Feb-02 2010 19:29.

nickyrenae

i have 9 messages but it won't let me see them i can only see sent ones.

Feb-02 2010 23:32.

bamagencies

Direct messages count states 7. Empty when in view screen!!

I wish I was that popular!!!

Feb-03 2010 03:32.

commerceadviser

I am having a similar issue but also the number of people I am following is showing up wrong, I am following 11 but it states over 30 people

Feb-03 2010 09:12.

MarkSegel

I also have a count of two (2) but no messages present. Annoying.

Feb-03 2010 10:08.

daxtonsnini

My direct message count says I have a DM, but there is no message there. Help! Thanks! *2nd notice

Feb-03 2010 10:34.

mikecapozzi

direct message has shown that i've had 1 message for a few months now....no message in there.

Feb-03 2010 20:14.

beatface

I have no dms in my inbox, though I never deleted any. (So I guess the senders erased them?)

Count of 1.

n/a

I've been seeing this for maybe a week or so?

Thanks, guys. :)

Feb-04 2010 04:35.

Christinatobun

All the people that are followers or that i am following do not show on the drop down list in my direct messages.

Feb-04 2010 08:32.

AngryMnkeyFight

says i have 6 but none show up.

Feb-04 2010 11:38.

rhommagz

My girlfriend is getting disappointed because she thought i've been deleting her DMs but the fact is, ii just cant be found. When i opened it it's no longer there--sent and inbox! what's happening with the DMs?? Is that a virus or system failure?? Pls enlighten me before I LOSE MY GIRLFRIEND because of these LOST DMs!!!

Feb-04 2010 11:45.

rhommagz

This have been going on for the past 1 week and a half now...twice she already warned me...and just a while back it happened again!! Please...I don't want to deolete my acct just because of this! Please HELP!!!

Feb-04 2010 11:48.

httrosinha19

socorro!!!

Como funciona isso aqui???

Feb-04 2010 11:49.

TilaTruth

It is showing 3 for me, when I have none.

Feb-04 2010 15:14.

chakeia122

i want to send a direct message to some body and its not working

Feb-04 2010 15:24.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Nov 05, 2009 by Charles

Playing Hide n' Seek?

Some users are seeing an incomplete number of tweets when viewing their @username mentions (the replies tab on Twitter). In particular, older tweets may be missing and users may find that they cannot page back to see older @username mentions. We're working on the problem that causes this. When we have an update which addresses this issue, we will post an update below.

Please comment below with the following:

Your username

A direct link to the reply/mention(s) which are missing from your Mentions timeline (Go here if you are confused about how to obtain this link: http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/80586 )

The approximate dates/times from which you are missing replies/mentions

Thank you for your patience!
The Twitter Support Team

--

UPDATES:

Update March 02, 2010 ? EP: This issue is being examined by members of multiple teams as a priority. Please leave a comment below if your account is affected.

Update February 02, 2010 ? EP: We are still working actively on this issue. Please leave a comment below if your account is affected.

January 08, 2010. We are still working on this issue, with a fix hopefully on the horizon. Keep those comments coming.

December 16, 2009. Thank you so much for your comments! We will read them and pass them along to the engineers as examples of this bug. Keep 'em coming!

December 17, 2009. Our engineers are currently working on fixing this issue. It has been prioritized and should be fixed soon.

Submitted Feb 22 by ls

When you try to post a tweet from your Twitter homepage, are you stopped by a message that says "Internal Server Error"? This error has been popping up for some Twitterers recently, preventing them from posting tweets.

We are aware of this bug, and our engineers are hard at work right now trying to fix it. In the meantime, you may be able to clear the error at least temporarily by refreshing your browser page and/or navigating to another Twitter page before trying to tweet again.

If you're experiencing this error please leave a comment below, including your username, so we can track the number of people affected by this bug. We hope to have a fix ASAP. In the meantime, thanks for your patience!

? The Twitter Support Team

UPDATE 2/25/10 ? LS: This issue has been fixed by our engineers. If you are continuing to see this error when you post a tweet, please comment below so we know about it. Thanks!

Comments

faultytext

I am one of the users experiencing this problem, and it has been happening for about a week now.
Not only is it impossible to post tweets from my home computer, but the internal server error persists on my iPhone Twitter application as well.
Please fix this soon, as this error as rendered your site virtually useless to me.

Feb-22 2010 12:00.

Nicole_Bailey1

I'm also having this problem!!! username-Nicole_Bailey1

Feb-22 2010 12:53.

rowesk

This has been happening for about a month now.
Let's me post occasionally - but it's only very, very, occasionally...

Feb-22 2010 13:59.

AdeBarbs

Had this for ages. Twitter getting too big and the infrastructure cant cope?

Feb-22 2010 15:05.

davidjpritchard

Me too! - Pritchard

Feb-22 2010 16:38.

Woodlandfae

Been getting this for the past month almost all the time. For some reason it will only let me update via Text Message when it says Internal Server Error, and then sometimes I can post via the web again, but usually only the once before it returns to giving me the error message.

Feb-22 2010 16:56.

Fxckn_Uhmazinq

i have been having this problem for almost 5 days now...and i cannot post any tweet
Leqally_xBhAD

Feb-22 2010 17:44.

drake144

i'm having the same problem too. my twitter is drake144

Feb-23 2010 18:05.

jetZoom

Ditto... jetZoom

My tweets will show up, or not. Sometimes, if they show up, they are significantly delayed and in the wrong chronological order rendering them obsolete. Also happening with some iPhone apps. Especially the geotag feature. Using Tweetie 2, if i geotag the tweet, I receive an "internal server error"

Feb-24 2010 14:55.

bxtinkerbell28

I have the same problem..I cant reply or delete tweets. my username is NicoleBrand28

Feb-25 2010 06:19.

New_Pq

I'm also havinq this problem .. @Nells_DumPretty

Feb-25 2010 13:34.

GoofyNewfie

I cant seem to reply to tweets or even direct messages its been on going for weeks now my username is goofynewfie! Thanks!!!

Feb-25 2010 14:53.

wingedpineapple
Twitter

howdy

Feb-26 2010 12:06.

GadgetJase

help, I am not getting any updates in my time line. This is happening in web, ubertwitter and tweetdect. It has been happening all day. In tweetedeck it sayd "internal server error". Help. Regards @GadgetJase

Feb-28 2010 10:12.

CulinaryFool

I can post updates and they show on my timeline but have not received any other updates for the last 10 hours. If I look at a list I've created I can see the updates there, just nothing showing on my home page

Feb-28 2010 10:55.

ColinBrooks

Help! I'm having the same issue!!! No updates in my timeline except for my own. They are not showing up on the web interface nor on any of my twitter clients. The only thing working is my @Replies section. Last update I received was 11 hours ago!

Feb-28 2010 11:24.

excellentgenes5

Hello, I would like to use my username (@excellentgenes) & @smartgenes again. When will u be abel to restore this!!! I need to retrieve photos that I had on excellentgenes. Please help me!!!! I only deleted them 22 hrs. ago!!!

Mar-01 2010 15:57.

TheSuede91

a mi tambien me sale eso, por favor arreglen pronto ese problema, gracias.

Mar-04 2010 11:41.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Mar 01 by Charles

Some users are reporting that they cannot confirm the 'Be found on Twitter' confirmation box that shows up upon logging into an account:

Upon clicking the 'Good to go!' button, users experiencing this issue are taken to a blank page:

If you are experiencing the robot error message after clicking 'Good to go!', please leave one comment below including the fact you are getting the 'Sorry, that page doesn't exist!' error message. If you are experiencing a different issue related to the 'Be found on Twitter' pop up, please let us know in the comments below. Until we are able to resolve this issue we recommend clicking the 'Ask me later' button. We will place updates below when we have more information about this problem.

Thanks!

-The Twitter Support Team

Comments

Ballhawk_Ken

"Until we are able to resolve this issue we recommend clicking the 'Ask me later' button." That's your answer - something's not working, but you figure it's okay to leave it out there, just tell people to ignore it? You're kidding, right? How about just removing it?

Furthermore, assuming you do get it fixed at some point - how about updating the "?" links so they go to real pages that perhaps can explain why you feel it's necessary to publicize my phone number and e-mail address? Have you learned nothing about privacy issues from the missteps of Google, Facebook, and many others? You want to provide the ability for folks to be found by the e-mail address and phone number? Fine. But DO NOT MAKE IT THE DEFAULT!!!!!

Mar-01 2010 14:23.

mephron

It would also be nice to be able to turn this off so that we never see it again. I don't just go randomly adding people, and I would prefer to not get this popup every time I go to the web page.

Mar-01 2010 16:26.

mkgold

I want to never see this again.
I've tried multiple times to dismiss it, but it always pops back up when I visit the Twitter website.
It's enough to drive me away from the website.

Please add a "Don't show this again" checkbox and allow users to permanently dismiss this!!

Thank you.

Mar-01 2010 20:31.

LarrySchaibley

Yes, Please stop this from popping up. It's driving me crazy. If I want my friends to find me, I'll tell them how to do it. Please stop it. It's making me want to close this Twitter account.

Mar-02 2010 05:07.

reinisbz

i second everyone else.. please allow us to dismiss this once and for all.. i'm ready to stop using twitter just because of this too.

Mar-02 2010 11:53.

nicoelh

This is *SO* annoying. Please turn this "feature" off. I agree, anyone who needs to find me has already found me. I don't need to make friends with random shmucks who happen to live near me.

Mar-02 2010 19:12.

ClareBriglio

I have tried choosing "good to go" and "ask me later". Both end in the same result.... nothing seems to be saved. My search settings allow others to find me via my email address so I don't understand why I am getting this message in the first place. I have closed the browser window and logged back in to Twitter about 20 times and I continue to receive this pop up.

Mar-02 2010 20:37.

lizinkc

JUST DELETE IT, FOR GOD'S SAKE! If the feature isn't working, turn it off, delete it. whatever you have to do. your solution is NO solution!!! what poor, poor customer service!!!

Mar-03 2010 07:32.

talithakumis

spam generator and crappy code.

Mar-03 2010 10:42.

auroralibellule

I agree, it's really annoying. It irritates me that such a well known and popular website doesn't know better. Just add a "Don't show me this again" box. Simple as that. I don't want to be found and they're making me feel like there's something wrong with that! just leave me alone!

Mar-03 2010 20:00.

JaynaGFitz

When this box pops up on my home page, it doesn't even give me the "Good to Go" or "Ask me later" options.
I just have to X out of it every time I log on because it doesn't show me the whole box.
It's quite annoying.

Mar-03 2010 20:45.

djBaltoBoogie

Twitter...don't try so hard to "keep up with the Joneses"! Since quite a bit of Bandwidth here is already superficial...including spammers and phishers, it won't take much to simply abandon this site a try one of your competitors. your participation in cross-platform apps allows much to trickle-down from you. Being at the top of a chain of events is already an advantage. Cultivate it and BE YOURSELF...

Mar-04 2010 15:36.

djBaltoBoogie

By the way, adding the option to Edit Comments would be more fruitful...in addition to extending the character limit on Tweets.

Mar-04 2010 15:39.

karlabits

i keep getting the pop up and i'm unable to see the "good to go!" and "ask me later" buttons.

annoying as f*** b/c it pops up every time i go to my twitter homepage.

Mar-04 2010 15:43.

dmays64

I too am getting this annoying message!! Please fix this!!

Mar-05 2010 05:20.

Susan_SwanJames

I keep getting this message. It doesn't matter whether I click "good to go" or try to edit the information. In both cases, I get the message my page doesn't exist. Ack! Please fix this.

Mar-05 2010 22:01.

andshehopes

I'm having this problem too. It's definitely very annoying. Nothing works. Please fix it :(

Mar-05 2010 22:24.

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Help desk software by Zendesk
 Not receiving email from Twitter?

Submitted Feb 02 by eddie

Account inaccessible?

If you are unable to log into your account and are unable to receive a password reset email, please submit a help request here with the following information:

(please be sure to select 'Password or login problems' from the 'Regarding' drop-down menu)

Your username

The email address associated with your account

The phone number associated with your account

If you are unable to access our web submission form, you will be redirected to a Twitter login page. If you are unable to login, please click the link in the lower-right corner of the page (it says "No account? Can't login?"). This will enable you to email the Support team directly. (In the "Email" field, be sure to type the address associated with your account.) In the subject line of the email, please write 'Password issues - Cannot log into my account', and include the information listed above.

Thanks for your patience,
Twitter Support

UPDATE 2/10/10 ?MN: You might also not be receiving confirmation emails or email notifications, if this is the case, please comment below stating which email you aren't receiving.

UPDATE 2/9/10 ? LS: We'll still working on this issue. Stay tuned for more updates.

UPDATE 2/1/10 ? LS: We are still experiencing this problem, especially with smaller email domains. Our engineers are working to correct this problem. In the meantime, please be sure to check your junk or spam folders for a password reset email, or submit a help request following the instructions above.

Comments

JotjeC

I have tried a number of times to get a confirmation e-mail without any success

Feb-11 2010 04:45.

TashukRei

I am not receiving the confirmation email. I have tried quite a few times and got nothing. I also tried changing to a different account. I received the email but when I clicked on the link I got the following error message.
Something is technically wrong.
Thanks for noticing?we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.
Now the alternative email address is stuck on and cannot be removed.

Feb-12 2010 08:35.

ginga313

not recieving confirmation email to my email address

Feb-12 2010 16:25.

PrideGutsGlory

I?m experiencing the exact same thing as TashukRei.

Feb-12 2010 18:23.

JANET224

this sucks i cant get my email back!

Feb-12 2010 19:07.

BettyBeBop

Not receiving email updates or phone updates. I can sign on and view my account and take actions no problem.

Feb-14 2010 06:08.

TashukRei

Is there any news of this issue being fixed yet? I would like to start using my account.

Feb-14 2010 22:04.

ZiaSat

Same issue... I can not receive the confirmation email--no matter how many times I request it to be resent. Strange. Never had problems with Twitter like this in the past. hmmm.

Feb-15 2010 01:53.

charnandaypinot

hmmmmmmm i quite agree maybe is been hacked into ?? just a thought hmmmm

Feb-15 2010 04:39.

Harold Ingram

Set up acount fine got confermation. But can't log in,sent password request and Twitter replyed that your no longer acepting E mail from me? What's up with that?

Feb-15 2010 06:30.

MIchael Bisson

Not receiving any emails and cannot access my Twitter account after it was compromised.
Am receiving ticket responses but assume that is because they are coming from zendesk.
For some reason my original ticket was closed with no explanation and I have not received any response to the new ticket I have raised apart from 3 automated responses, which don't help, and one response on Saturday saying that a response is being awaited from me. Puzzling as I have not received any requests for info.
Original ticket: #836276
New ticket: #854497

Feb-15 2010 09:45.

Barwellclive

I have just changed my email address. I have received the email to log on to Twitter to confirm the new address and I just keep getting an error message saying there is a techical prpblem!

Feb-16 2010 00:09.

aberjosie

I am also not receiving the account confirmation email.

Feb-16 2010 03:12.

JMRsOMA

I have not received mail in ages. My follower/following list stays on the same number. My @JMRsOMA has not changed. What's up? I'm referring people and would like to read their comments.

Feb-16 2010 08:08.

TashukRei

It's fixed. I thought I'd try one more time to resend a confirmation email after waiting a few days. It worked. I'm all logged in and ready to start Tweeting.
Thanks Twitter peoples. (if you actually did anything and if you didn't just pretend you did...)

Feb-16 2010 16:53.

hawaiitechguy

I have helped several people and the email confirmation has failed 90% of the time. Can someone let me know what's going to break please

Feb-17 2010 01:10.

thermogenic

I am also not receiving a confirmation email. I have tried numerous email addresses and have tested fromother accounts. Twitter seems to not be sending the confirmation email. @thermogenic
Thanks

Feb-19 2010 11:06.

mariarickert

i'm not receiving the confirmation email, so i can't follow anyone.

Feb-19 2010 11:51.

HEB_Servant2All

I am not receiving the confirmation email. I have checked it by sending emails from one account to another and i receive them, but no emails from Twitter. I have no "black list" because I have just set up this email account.

Feb-19 2010 12:48.

rlayson1986

I use to have an account @realpolitics using the email address rlayson1986@gmail.com. I closed the account using this e-mail. My current twitter @rlayson1986 e-mail is no longer active and I cannot changethe email ont he account to rlayson1986@gmail.com because the system says this e-mail already exist from my old twitter I no longer want. Please e-mail me at rlayson1986@gmail or tweet @rlayson1986 and help me as soon as possible.

thanks

Feb-21 2010 21:46.

dapolished1

i have a revol touch screen add revol to your supported phones so i can receive my updates ASAP PLEASE!

Feb-22 2010 01:20.

DealerLocator

We have tried numerous times to re-send the account verification email. It never arrives. I've checked all SPAM mailboxes but it is not getting delivered. The email address is dealerlocator@where2getit.com. If I send email email to this from an email client, it gets through without a problem so I know that the email account works.

What else can be tried?

Thanks.

Feb-22 2010 11:12.

lambchoplee

I have checked my e-mail and have not yet received a confirmation e-mail from twitter....therefore, I can not follow anyone or anything :)

Feb-22 2010 12:10.

Saber_Morelia

I really want to confirm my e-mail address, but i need, for technical reasons, that the e-mails (specially the one that is intended to confirm) be sended almost like twitter stuff, no more than 150 characters and just text, please... i need it so much!!

Thanks.

Feb-22 2010 23:02.

byRumi

i have checked my e-mail and have not received a confirmation e-mail from you guys. so i can not follow anyone, you guys check it please

Feb-23 2010 07:26.

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Help desk software by Zendesk

Submitted Jan 26 by Charles

Photo no go?

Some users are having trouble customizing their profile. This appears to be affecting both profile pictures and background images. Specifically, background image uploads claim to be uploading successfully but are not being displayed as the profile background after uploading and saving. Please make sure that you understand how to properly upload a background image. Also make sure that the image which you are trying to upload meets the image requirements specified here.

If your image meets the file size and format requirements listed at the links above, please upload your image to Twitpic. Then, copy the link and paste it in the comments below with the following information:

The username of the affected account

The file size of the image (K or kb)

The format of the image

The Twitpic link to the image

We will place updates on this issue on this page below our signature when we have more information. Check back for more information soon.

We have determined the issue and are working on resolving it, in the meantime, please check the latest update below to find a temporary fix.

Thanks for your help,
The Twitter Support Team

---

UPDATE 2/23/10 -- CM: We discovered a work-around for this problem:

It appears that most of the affected images are images which use the .JPG format. To upload these images, please try converting the image to a smaller .JPG image or another format (PNG or GIF). On OS X this conversion can be done using the Preview application by simply opening the image, clicking File --> Save As, and then saving the image as a different format. On Windows the conversion can be done using the Paint application: open the image using Paint, click File --> Save As, and then save the image as either a PNG or GIF file.

UPDATE 2/22/10 ? LG: We are receiving tickets regarding the "Upload" button for their profile images.
In order to upload, you must hit "Save" at the bottom of the page.
Sorry about the confusion.
For more information please go to the Customizing your Profile page.

UPDATE 2/9/10 ? LS: We are in the process of fixing this. If you experience this issue, please leave a comment below. Thanks!

UPDATE 2/2/10 ? KP: We are still working on correcting this problem, and we appreciate your patience.

Comments

Auto_Star

My background image won't load.

Username: Auto_Star

File Size: 66.9 Kb

Format: png

Twitpic link: http://twitpic.com/101dk3

I'd appreciate your help in getting this uploaded.

Many thanks

Jan-27 2010 11:28.

Leo_Alli

Same here... I don't even get an "Upload" button for the file I "Browse" to!

Submitted Jan 06 by Charles

Oops, our bad!

We recently made a change which caused accounts which have been verified to be unable to change their profile information. This uneditable information includes:

Location

Bio

More info URL

Will we fix it?

Of course! Our engineers are currently aware of the situation. They will release a fix as soon as one is developed. We will place updates at the end of this article when we have more information about the status of this problem. Thanks!

Thank you!,
Twitter Support

--

UPDATE 2/9/10 ? LS: Still working to fix this issue.

UPDATE 2/2/10 ? LS: We haven't forgotten about this issue, and are still working on releasing a fix. Thanks for your patience.

Comments

erojohn

Hi I don't have this problem because my profile is not verified, because I can't find how to actually do that. Where's the info about getting my profile to be verified? Thanks!

Jan-07 2010 06:27.

crossett

I also noticed that some key people I follow are also listed as a "verified" profile.
Is that something that is available to all general users?

Jan-07 2010 06:59.

saltynumber

can one reply to a verified account? Seems sometimes blocks would be more appropriate if not a PREREQUISITE or a given. Like not one individual is blocked but all are blocked except exceptions or access permit list. ;+((

Jan-07 2010 11:14.

LoKiTo_JamOnIt

How and Where Can we Make our account Verified ? to many fake pages out there ...Twitter support should work on that ..Only people with a video can verify accounts since anyone can photoshop a name into a piece a paper so no Pictures

Jan-07 2010 12:41.

mycoyoteandme

I want my account deleted completely. It will not leave me do that or change my profile. Please get it deleted, mycoyoteandme@yahoo.com

Jan-08 2010 17:36.

lulalopo

Can you please tell me the email address to this username: kayshawilliams.
I really need it.

Its my old account. Send it here at: Chelseajerry@yahoo.com.
Thank you!

Jan-08 2010 19:56.

JasonLyric_

Hello, I just want to know how i can get my account to show verified, listing my location,bio,and url. My email address is mp3jasonlyric@gmail.com.

Thank you.

Jan-09 2010 18:02.

Chewy1965

Submitted Aug 11, 2009 by Charles

Are you receiving upgrade notifications in error?

Some of our users are seeing notifications at the top of their home timeline when they log into their accounts. These notifications tell the user that they are not using the most recent version of their internet browser and are advised to upgrade. If you have not upgraded your browser, you should do so now. If you have already upgraded but are still receiving this message, read on.

If you are still seeing notifications:

If this is you, we apologize for the confusion this error may be causing you! There are currently two manifestations of this bug:

You are using the latest version of Firefox but are continually told to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox.

You are not using Firefox but are continually being told to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox.

We would appreciate knowing what group your account falls into. Please write the following information in the comments below:

Your username

Are you experiencing issue 1. or 2.

(If you are experiencing 2.) What browser are you using and what version is it?

Thank you for your patience and help!

Sincerely,
The Twitter Support Team

---

UPDATE: 03/02/10 - We believe this issue is still affecting users of Internet Explorer 8. Please continue to comment below if you are still experiencing this issue. Thanks!

Comments

natsnot

natsnot

#2

Internet Explorer version 8.0.6001.18783

and Firefox is not mentioned, only that there is a newer version of my Browser and I should upgrade.

Thanks!

Aug-11 2009 18:55.

NewNaomi

Same as natsnot. version 8.0.6001.18783 No mention of Firefox.

I don't want anyone telling me what browser to use!

Aug-12 2009 15:57.

yourstorybooks

My main and first account got suspended - some hacker to also got into my account..It has been sine July 6th or so - countless emails to support @ twitter - ... please reinstate my
account.. its been 6 weeks plus and Ive heard nothing!! ..nor did I post that
crap. Someone hacked into my account but hopefullyI have gotten that resolved - my account is @Mn_countryangel - this was connected to my business and countless of other sites, blogs and facebook and myspace. PLEASE CONTACT ME! - and all I have gotten is generated replies. I have even contacted you personally- and still have been ignored. You have gotten all my contact information, phone numbers ect. A simple polite call or response would be appreciated - Becky C.

Aug-14 2009 08:58.

debbiesuhy

debbiesuhy

#2

IE 8.0.6001.18702

Aug-15 2009 10:43.

bossladyf

My account was suspended because I used Tweetdeck to retweet from both of my accounts, I had other users that I follow that have more than 2 accounts and retweet with Tweetdeck. And if this is a violation of Twitter rules then why are the apps like Tweetdeck, Seesmic etc.., allow users to add more than one account. This is a rule that should be clearly posted when you sign up for these types of accounts. Because I had no idea it was a violation and clearly did not do it very many times. And with the fact that some of the accounts that get suspended are just regular twitterers and not purposely spamming, there should be some kind of warning. And what do you consider spamming, what about the accounts that try to get you to visit these vulgar websites to see their naked photos, but seem like they are real legit people. How do you do your investigations???? My account has also been suspended for a week and I also have my account linked to my blogs, websites, etc.. the rules should be more clear and concise. And accounts should not just be randomly suspended unti after a thorough investigation.

Aug-15 2009 15:59.

bluelin3r

-bluelin3r

-#2

-Firefox v.3.5.2

Aug-15 2009 18:11.

sickanpickan

My problem is with the latest upgrade to Firefox 3.5.2 (yesterday).
Beforhand it worked as it should, with 3.5.
Can't do anything really , again... :-( That is sad.

Anyone else having the same probs?

I've checked the status report which states you're working on solving the problem, but it should be mentioned here at known issues, I think as a separate thread, so that we know you guys are looking into it. Don't you think?

Well, hoping for a quick fix.
Thanks a bunch!

Aug-16 2009 01:07.

chris_hall62

I am having problems with updating my Twitter status via the Firefox 3.5.2 browser - it just will not do it. But Twitter seems to work fine with Internet Explorer.

This problem has persisted for days and is becoming very irritating.

Please can you sort this out.

Thank

Aug-16 2009 05:05.

SteveIndelicato

I keep getting this message "Twitter recommends that you upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer" Let it be known I do not and never used Firefox. There is no mention of Firefox in your error wondow. I have the latest browser by Microsoft called Internet Explorer version 8.0. Perhaps your software is pointing to the wrong brower locaton in the system's registry, thus incorrectly identifying which brower a users has. In the future, listen to what your users are saying and make the necessary corrections to your software.

Aug-16 2009 06:57.

llling_06

heenim

#1 - I'm using Firefox 3.5.2.

Aug-16 2009 11:08.

sgreen3

I am also having problems with updating my
Twitter status via the Firefox 3.5.2 browser - the processing icons just continues to display and my updates are not posted. I was able to do this fine with Internet Explorer v.7 but I have switched over to FF (and 3.5.2 is the latest version and the one available for download from Mozilla) because of other issues with IE. I submitted a request on this issue, and it was closed but the issue was not solved. This problem is quite aggravating and I would appreciate if there was at least some kind of indication that Twitter is aware of and working on the issue.

Thank you.

Aug-16 2009 13:21.

chris_hall62

I second that comment - this is exactly how I feel. Twitter previously closed one of my requests without any communication with me or indication that the problem had been solved (it hadn't). I am hoping for better customer care with this Firefox 3.5.2. browser issue.

Thank you

Aug-16 2009 14:34.

sophikjen

my account is @sophikjen. seems the latest version of firefox isn't working with twitter at present. i cannot post tweets. please advise. thank you.

Aug-16 2009 17:56.

sgreen3

Twitter has now added something to their status blog about this issue, and has suggested clearing the cookies for twitter.com as a solution. This worked for me; however, I hope that this issue doesn't persist. Good luck to all, I hope you are able to fix your issues.

Aug-16 2009 18:23.

josephdunphy

I'm wondering is somebody currently posting to GetSatisfaction has a related problem. She can't even get the twitter.com homepage to open, which is why I'm posting for her. Her name is Elisabeth Weinberg and she writes

"I cannot get on Twitter from my home computer for no apparent reason. It's not that I can't login--I just literally can't open the site. When I go to twitter.com, an error page comes up that says the "connection was reset" And that's it--I can't go beyond that error page. I can access from my iphone though. Help! And I can't figure out how to contact Twitter to find out what's going on."

One can find the discussion at

Submitted Jan 25 by tholden

Unable to delete your lists?

Some users are reporting that they cannot edit or delete private lists they have created. This bug does not affect all lists, only a small percentage of private.

What can you do?

There is currently no work around in place. If you are experiencing a similar issue, please leave the details in the comments. Helpful information would include:

The username of the affected account

The name of the affected list(s)

Whether the list is private or public

This information will help us gauge the severity of this bug.

Thanks for your patience!

We'll post comments immediately below with more information about the bug as we gain more knowledge about the problem. Please be patient, bugs take time to fix and our engineering team is working hard to get everything back to normal.

Sincerly,

The Twitter Support Team

Update:

March 2, 2010 ? LE: We're still working on this issue.

February 2, 2010 ? LE: This is still a known issue that we're working to fix.

---

Comments

jeremypeng

My list can?t delete,please help me !

username:jeremypeng

list name:hello

timestamp:...I don't kown

Jan-25 2010 18:48.

DanielElsaesser

same problem with this list http://twitter.com/#/list/DanielElsaesser/friends.

the problem first occured after i deleted everybody from the list (since i wanted to delete the list. i dont know why i just simply deleted the list in the first place. sigh).

Jan-26 2010 02:34.

jeremypeng

This list is a System Bug, Can't add friends & Can't edit or delete.

So please, help me.

Jan-26 2010 18:06.

jeremypeng

OK, This List is empty, Please delete it.

Thanks~

Jan-27 2010 08:30.

penguin1982

I can't create a new list. Sometimes I will see half the box or none of it at all. So I don't have a specific list problem I just can't create new ones.

Jan-27 2010 10:40.

ArleneFowler

I had a list and now the whole thing has disappeared. It's no longer on my home page and there is no place to start a new one. Basically the entire function has been eliminated from my account. In addition, if I go to anyone else's profile, there is no longer a button to add them to a list. How can I get that feature back again?

Jan-27 2010 11:21.

ailient

Hello ArleneFowler, here is what Twitter had to say in there blog:

Working on Tweet delivery delays 1 hour ago

We are investigating the source of tweet delivery delays this morning.

Update (10:51a): We?ve temporarily disabled lists and local trends as we further diagnose the delay problem.

Update (11:10a): The delivery issue has improved and lists, local trends and name search remain temporarily disabled. Some users will also not receive delivery of tweets via SMS.

Jan-27 2010 11:30.

Maikeru48

I have (had?) private lists and am having the same trouble as ArleneFowler above. Please help!

Jan-27 2010 11:34.

artcounsel

My private lists have completely disappeared! (hand wringing) They took me so long to organize!!! Help!!!!

Jan-27 2010 11:38.

Maikeru48

Looks like my lists are working okay now. Woohoo!

Jan-27 2010 11:43.

zantei_teki

I cannot delete both of my private lists which I have created today for that apple event.@zantei_teki/apple-event-jp @zantei_teki/apple-event-en

I suspect this is the similar case to DanielElsaesser mentioned above.

Thank you in advance

Jan-27 2010 12:10.

KiGaNa

Submitted Jan 06 by Nachtigal

Having trouble with your MySpace widget?

If you have installed the MySpace widget we provide on our Goodies page, you may experience an issue with your Tweets not getting delivered to your MySpace profile. Please note that we are aware of this and have determined it to be an issue on MySpace's end.

To contact MySpace's support team, please visit the following link:

Submitted Dec 09, 2009 by eddie

If you are installing the Twitter application on Facebook:

Our goal is to provide a service that allows you to discover and receive content from sources that interest you as well as to share your content with others. We respect the ownership of the content that users share and each user is responsible for the content he or she provides. Because of these principles, we do not actively monitor user?s content and will not censor user content, except in limited circumstances described below.

Content Boundaries and Use of Twitter

In order to provide the Twitter service and the ability to communicate and stay connected with others, there are some limitations on the type of content that can be published with Twitter. These limitations comply with legal requirements and make Twitter a better experience for all. We may need to change these rules from time to time and reserve the right to do so. Please check back here to see the latest.

*Impersonation: You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others

*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.

*Privacy: You may not publish or post other people's private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.

*Violence and Threats: You may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.

*Copyright: We will respond to clear and complete notices of alleged copyright infringement. Our copyright procedures are set forth in the Terms of Service.

*Unlawful Use: You may not use our service for any unlawful purposes or for promotion of illegal activities. International users agree to comply with all local laws regarding online conduct and acceptable content.

*Verified accounts: You may not use the Verified Account badge unless it is provided by Twitter. Accounts using the badge as part of profile pictures, background images, or in any way implying false verification will be permanently suspended.

Spam and Abuse

Twitter strives to protect its users from spam and abuse. Technical abuse and user abuse is not tolerated on Twitter.com, and will result in permanent suspension. Any accounts engaging in the activities specified below are subject to permanent suspension.

* Serial Accounts: You may not create serial accounts for disruptive or abusive purposes, or with overlapping use cases. Mass account creation may result in suspension of all related accounts. Please note that any violation of the Twitter Rules is cause for permanent suspension of all accounts.

* Name Squatting: You may not engage in name squatting. Accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months may also be removed without further notice. Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be name squatting are:

the number of accounts created

creating accounts for the purpose of preventing others from using those account names

creating accounts for the purpose of selling those accounts

using feeds of third-party content to update and maintain accounts under the names of those third parties

*Invitation spam: You may not use Twitter.com's address book contact import to send repeat, mass invitations

*Selling user names: Unless you have been specifically permitted to do so in a separate agreement with Twitter, you agree that you will not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade or resell the Services for any purpose.

Where "Services" is defined as follows: Your use of Twitter?s products, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the ?Services? in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Twitter under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Twitter.

*Malware/Phishing: You may not publish or link to malicious content intended to damage or disrupt another user?s browser or computer or to compromise a user?s privacy.

*Spam: You may not use the Twitter service for the purpose of spamming anyone. What constitutes ?spamming? will evolve as we respond to new tricks and tactics by spammers. Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be spamming are:

If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time;

If you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn);

If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile;

If you have a small number of followers compared to the amount of people you are following;

If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;

If you post misleading links;

If a large number of people are blocking you;

The number of spam complaints that have been filed against you;

If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account;

If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using #;

If you post multiple unrelated updates to a trending or popular topic;

If you send large numbers of duplicate @replies;

If you send large numbers of unsolicited @replies in an attempt to spam a service or link;

If you add a large number of unrelated users to lists in an attempt to spam a service or link;

If you repeatedly post other users' Tweets as your own;

If you have attempted to "sell" followers, particularly through tactics considered aggressive following or follower churn;

Using or promoting third-party sites that claim to get you more followers (such as follower trains, sites promising "more followers fast," or any other site that offers to automatically add followers to your account).

Your account may be suspended for Terms of Service violations if any of the above is true. Please see our help pages on Following Best Practices and Automation Rules and Best Practices for a more detailed discussion of how the Rules apply to those particular account behaviors. Accounts created to replace suspended accounts will be permanently suspended.

*Pornography: You may not use obscene or pornographic images in either your profile picture or user background.

Accounts engaging in any of these behaviors may be investigated for abuse. Accounts under investigation may be removed from Search for quality. Twitter reserves the right to immediately terminate your account without further notice in the event that, in its judgment, you violate these Rules or the Terms of Service.

Submitted Dec 05, 2008 by crystal

Terms of Service and Rules Violations

The Twitter Trust & Safety group responds to violations of the Twitter Rules and Terms of Service. Using the information below, find out what constitutes a violation, and what information you'll need to provide to get the quickest resolution to a problem.

Whenever possible, please include direct links to any Tweets you'd like us to review (this help page shows you how to find the direct status links to individual Tweets).

Policy Issues:

Brand and Trademark Complaints: If an account appears to be falsely affiliated with your company or business, Twitter will work with you to resolve the problem. See the Trademark Policy help page.

Breach of Privacy: If your private, identifying information has been posted by another user, we will take action to remove it. See the Privacy Violation help page.

Child Pornography: We do not tolerate child pornography on Twitter. When we are made aware of such images promoting or encouraging child pornography, they will be removed from the site without further notice; we permanently suspend accounts containing updates with links to child pornography. See the Reporting Child Pornography help page.

Copyright Complaints: Twitter strives to uphold all relevant copyright laws, and responds to DMCA take-down notices sent by email, mail or fax. See Filing a Copyright Complaint or DMCA Take-Down Notice Page.

Harassment and Violent Threats: Twitter doesn't allow violent threats or content directed toward people if it is SPECIFIC, PHYSICAL, and VIOLENT. See the Harassment and Violent Threats help page.

Impersonation: To report a personal impersonation, please see the Impersonation help page. Businesses and organizations facing impersonation issues should file a complaint using the steps on the Trademark Policy help page.

Name Squatting: Username squatting is against the Twitter Rules. Attempts to sell or extort other forms of payment in exchange for usernames will result in permanent account suspension. We only release squatted names in case of Trademark Violations or Impersonation; review those pages if you would like to report and claim a squatted name. Otherwise, our Name Squatting Policy has more information.

Pornography: Obscene or pornographic images in either user profile pictures or user backgrounds will be removed. Report such images by submitting filing a support ticket. Please be sure to include links to the profile in violation.

Reposting Others' Content without Attribution: Re-posting others' content without attribution and without their permission is a violation of Twitter's Rules. See the Reposting Others' Content without Attribution help page.

Unlawful Use: Twitter prohibits the use of our service for any unlawful purposes or for promotion of illegal activities. Report unlawful use by filing filing a support ticket with specific links and/or other evidence of unlawful use. Agencies of the law, please see Guidelines for Law Enforcement.

Spam and System Abuse:

Malware/Phishing: Publishing or linking to malicious content intended to damage or disrupt another person?s browser or computer, or to compromise a person?s privacy, is a violation that will result in permanent suspension. Malware/phishing links are automatically removed from Twitter. To report malware or phishing, please file a support ticket.

Mass or Serial Account creation: There are legitimate reasons why users may have multiple accounts. Creating serial or bulk accounts with overlapping use, however, is prohibited. Take note that violations of the Twitter Rules may result in permanent suspension of all related accounts. Please file a support ticket if you have questions on appropriate use. Include the list of accounts and your planned use of each account.

Spam: You can now report spam directly from the user profile page; find out how on the Reporting Spam on Twitter help page. The Twitter Rules describes what behaviors indicate spam. If your account has been suspended for spam investigation, see the Contesting Account Suspension help page.

Reporting Terms of Service and Twitter Rules Violations

Each of the above help pages has contact information for the Twitter Trust & Safety group. If you don't have a Twitter account or can't submit a ticket through our web form, send a request to our team at terms@twitter.com.

Submitted Dec 05, 2008 by crystal

Accounts are generally suspended for violations of the Twitter Rules; please read the rules to find out more about specific violations. We also may suspend accounts for investigation if we suspect an account has been hacked or compromised. To petition for account reinstatement, please take the following steps:

1. Confirm that your Account was Suspended:

If you suspect that your account has been suspended, please log in to your account here. If your account is suspended, you'll see a red warning box on your timeline notifying you of account suspension.

You can also find out if you're suspended by visiting your profile page at twitter.com/[username] (where you replace [username] with your Twitter username). When an account is suspended, we replace the profile page with a page stating the account has been suspended. Please make sure that your account is actually suspended before contacting Support.

2. Check your Email Inbox for More Information:

We often send a notification email directly to the email address associated with your Twitter account; please review that email for additional information about your suspension.

If your account was suspended for aggressive following behaviors, you'll need to confirm that you've removed all prohibited following automation from your account, and will stop any manual aggressive following behavior. You can find information on following automations and permitted following behaviors on the Following Best Practices help page. To expedite your appeal process, please review that help page and be sure to include your confirmation when you file your ticket.

3. File a Support Ticket to Appeal Suspension

To petition for account reinstatement, file a Support request. Be sure to select "my account is suspended" from the drop-down menu. If you submit while logged in to your Twitter account, you'll be able to check on your ticket status anytime by visiting your Twitter Support home page and clicking "check on your existing requests."

If you're unable to submit a request through our help form, please send an email to suspended@twitter.com.

Submitted Nov 30, 2008 by crystal

What is an inactive account?

An account is considered inactive if it hasn't been logged into or updated in over 6 months. Inactive accounts may be automatically removed from Twitter. To keep your account active, be sure to log in and post an update within 6 months of your last update. Accounts that have no followers, followings, or updates may be considered squatting accounts and immediately removed from circulation, so do please avoid this if possible!

Note: Inactive accounts are legitimate but abandoned or unused accounts. Other common issues include violations of our trademark, impersonation, and copyright policies. These should be reported as Terms of Service violations; please consult those help pages for instructions on contacting us about infringing accounts. Due to high volume, individual requests for inactive usernames are not being taken at this time.

How do I know if an account is inactive?

Checking a profile page will reveal the last update of an account. If six months have passed since the last update, the account is considered inactive. If an account doesn't have any updates, it may be a recent account that's not in use yet, or it may be a name squatter account. Twitter is currently working on bulk-releasing all inactive usernames. We are not releasing inactive accounts on an individual basis at this time unless in cases of Terms of Service violations.

How do I report a Terms of Service violation?

Twitter Support, specifically the Terms of Service group, handles Terms of Service violations. If your username request concerns a potential violation, check out our Terms of Service and Rules guidelines to find out what to do. Our help pages for impersonation and trademark policies have additional instructions and information we will need to process your request.

Submitted Jan 14, 2009 by crystal

Name squatting is against the Twitter Rules.

Username squatting is prohibited by the Twitter Rules.

If your report involves impersonation or trademark infringement, please consult those policies for instructions for reporting these accounts. Please note that if an account has had no updates, no profile image, and there is no intent to mislead, it typically means there's no name-squatting or impersonation. Note that we will not release inactive or squatted usernames except in cases of trademark infringement.

Attempts to sell, buy, or solicit other forms of payment in exchange for usernames are also violations and may result in permanent account suspension.

Submitted Jan 14, 2009 by crystal

What is impersonation?

Impersonation is pretending to be another person or entity in order to deceive. Impersonation is a violation of the Twitter Rules and may result in permanent account suspension.

Twitter users are allowed to create parody, commentary, or fan accounts. Please refer to Twitter's Parody Policy for more information about these accounts. Accounts with the clear intent to confuse or mislead may be permanently suspended.

What if my trademarked brand/business is being impersonated or misused?

Companies and businesses should report accounts misusing their trademarks or brand by filing a complaint under our Trademark Policy. Please review that help page, as there is specific information we will need to process your claim.

Who can report impersonation?

Twitter processes impersonation reports from the user being impersonated or someone legally authorized to act on behalf of the user/entity.

What information do I need to include when reporting impersonation?

In order to investigate impersonation, we need the following information:

Username of the person impersonating you (or the URL of their profile page):
Your First and Last Name:
Your Twitter username (if you have one):
Address:
Phone:

Brief description of the impersonating content:

If you are not the person involved in the impersonation, but are legally authorized to act their behalf, please include the information above in addition this information:

Your Name:

Phone:

Fax:
Company Website:
Company domain email address:

Your title and legal relationship to the person/entity involved:

How do I report an impersonation violation?

To report an impersonation, please submit a ticket request with the information requested above. Be sure to select 'impersonation' from the drop-down menu. If you submit while logged into your Twitter account, you'll be able to check on your ticket status anytime by visiting your Twitter Support home page and clicking on "check on your existing requests."

If you don't have a Twitter account or are unable to log in to reach the form, please just visit the ticket request form and click the blue "No account? Login problems?" link in the lower-right. Once you've submitted your ticket, we?ll email you a ticket confirmation with more information.

Submitted Feb 01 by ginger

Twitter users are allowed to create parody, commentary, or fan accounts. Twitter provides a platform for its users to share and receive a wide range of ideas and content, and we greatly value and respect our users' expression. Because of these principles, we do not actively monitor users' content and will not edit or remove user content, except in cases of violations of our Terms of Service.

Each user is responsible for the content that they provide. Accounts with clear intent to deceive or confuse are prohibited as impersonation accounts and subject to suspension. Please see our guidelines for reporting impersonation for information on filing an impersonation complaint.

Guidelines for Parody, Commentary and Fan accounts

In order to avoid impersonation, an account's profile information should make it clear that the creator of the account is not actually the same person or entity as the subject of the parody/commentary. Here are some suggestions for marking your account:

Username: The username should not be the exact name of the subject of the parody, commentary, or fandom; to make it clearer, you should distinguish the account with a qualifier such as "not," "fake," or "fan."

Name: The profile name should not list the exact name of the subject without some other distinguishing word, such as "not," "fake," or "fan."

Bio: The bio should include a statement to distinguish it from the real identity, such as "This is a parody," "This is a fan page," "Parody Account," "Fan Account," or "This is not affiliated with?"

Communication with other users: The account should not, through private or public communication with other users, try to deceive or mislead others about your identity. For example, if operating a fan account, do not direct message other users implying you are the actual subject (i.e., person, band, sports team, etc.) of the fan account.

If an account is engaged in parody and follows all of the above recommendations, it will generally be free to continue in its parody so long as it doesn't mislead or deceive others. These are considered best practices for clearly marking accounts as one that is engaging in non-impersonation parody/commentary. Users may also choose to use different language to indicate that an account is a parody, commentary, or fan account so long as it is clear. However, if an account is found to be deceptive or misleading, we may request that the user make further changes to bring the account more in line with these best practices. Accounts with a clear intent to deceive may be permanently suspended.

Submitted Dec 05, 2008 by crystal

Twitter is a content provider and not a mediator. As such, we will not get involved in personal disputes. We provide you with the power to block users from contacting you or appearing in your timeline. If another user is bothering you, we recommend you block them.

Due to the sensitive nature of these claims, we will need to deal directly with either the user affected, or a party legally authorized to act on their behalf.

What is a violent threat?

Violent threats are against Twitter's Terms of Service. Twitter doesn't allow violent threats or content directed toward people if it is SPECIFIC, PHYSICAL, and VIOLENT. A violent threat must contain the following:

Specificity (time and location where violent event is said to take place)

Physicality (description of what is to take place physically)

Violence (the event described intended to do harm)

An update must contain all three of the items described above to qualify as a Terms of Service violation.
If you feel there is immediate danger we urge you to call 911, or your local emergency services, at once.

How do I report a violent threat?

Twitter Support, specifically the Terms of Service group, handles violent threat complaints. To report a violent threat, please visit Twitter Support and file a request. If you're logged into Twitter, you can visit Twitter Support directly from your twitter account by clicking the help link in the top navigation bar. Submit a request
and choose "reporting violent threats" from the drop down box. In your request, include the following information:

Your username,

The username of the person threatening or making violent statements toward you, and

Links to the threatening/violent status updates (like so: http://twitter.com/pankaj/status/2034269889). Please see this help page for detailed instructions on finding a Tweet's status link.

Once you've submitted your ticket, we'll email you a ticket confirmation. You can check on your ticket status anytime by visiting your Twitter Support home page and clicking "Check on your existing requests." If you're unable to submit a request through our Support form, please send an email with the information described above to terms@twitter.com.

For issues involving impersonation, please visit our Impersonation Help Page. For issues involving privacy violations and the unauthorized posting of personal information, please visit our Privacy Violations Help Page.

We cannot provide you with any information on the offending account without a subpoena. Law enforcement officers can click here for information on submitting a subpoena.

Submitted Dec 11, 2008 by crystal

Twitter provides a platform for users to upload and share ideas and content. Users may share Tweets posted by others using features such as Retweeting.

As a policy, we do not intervene in personal disputes between users. If you believe your Tweet has been posted without proper attribution and the situations below are inapplicable to your case, you can use an @reply or direct message to contact the other user.

Reporting Automated Spam Bots

Some automated spam accounts steal other users' Tweets in order to appear like a real person. If you think you might be experiencing this issue, please file a support request selecting "Reporting spam" from the drop-down. Our Trust & Safety team can investigate to determine if this is the cause. Please include links to the exact username you are reporting, and any relevant status updates (see this help page for detailed instructions on finding a Tweet's status link).

The Twitter Rules include a list of criteria we consider when investigating potential spam accounts. Accounts showing a pattern of repeatedly reposting others' content without attribution, particularly in an automated fashion, may be suspended for spam.

Reposting Copyrighted Material Without Permission

Copyright complaints concern the unauthorized distribution or republishing of material protected by copyright law. As stated in our Terms of Service, Twitter strives to uphold all relevant copyright laws. Our help page on Filing a Copyright complaint or DMCA Take-Down Notice has information on how to report copyright violations.

Submitted Jan 14, 2009 by crystal

Posting other people's private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter Rules. Such information may include:

credit card information

social security or other national identity numbers

addresses or locations that are considered private

non-public, personal phone numbers

non-public, personal email addresses

Reporting Privacy Violations

If someone has posted your private information on Twitter, please submit a Support ticket with the following information:

Your username (if you have a Twitter account)

A description of the private information that was posted, and links to those updates (this help page explains how to find a Tweet's direct link).

When you file your ticket, be sure to select "Violent Threats/Harassment" from the drop-down menu. Once you've submitted your ticket, we?ll email you a ticket confirmation with more information. If you submit while logged into your Twitter account, you'll be able to check on your ticket status anytime by visiting your Twitter Support home page and clicking on "check on your existing requests."

If you don't have a Twitter account or are unable to log in to reach the form, please just visit the ticket request form and click the blue "No account? Login problems?" link in the lower-right.

Submitted May 20, 2009 by crystal

Twitter removes content promoting child pornography

We do not tolerate child pornography on Twitter. When we are made aware of such images promoting or encouraging child pornography they will be removed from the site without further notice; we permanently suspend accounts containing updates with links to child pornography. Twitter is a content provider, not a mediator of content.

Reporting content promoting child pornography

If you think you've found an account promoting child pornography while using Twitter, please send an email to cp@twitter.zendesk.com to let us know. Please include a link to the profile and links to the relevant tweets that lead you to believe the account should be investigated. (Click on the time stamp of the tweet to get the tweet's URL.)

Law Enforcement Agencies

Law Enforcement may contact Twitter directly at lawenforcement@twitter.com; requests must come from official law enforcement domains and include relevant identifying information (such as badge number, case number, etc.) Requests sent to this email address from non-law enforcement agencies will be discarded.

For general law enforcement inquiries, please see our Guidelines for Law Enforcement for more information.

Submitted Jan 14, 2009 by crystal

What is trademark violation?

Using a company or business name, logo, or other trademark-protected
materials in a manner that may mislead or confuse others or be used for
financial gain may be considered trademark infringement. Accounts with
clear INTENT to mislead others will be immediately suspended; even if
there is no trademark infringement, attempts to mislead others are
tantamount to business impersonation.

What happens to the infringing account?

Twitter works with most account owners to remove infringements so that the person may keep the account.

News feed accounts will be required to clearly designate
that they are aggregating news about a company to resolve confusion.
News feed aggregates are welcome, but must not use logos or copyright
protected images, and must clearly designate non-affiliation with the
entity represented in the news feed to avoid suspension.

Accounts created to help a community or provide information will be contacted with the appropriate steps required to keep the account.

If there is a clear intent to mislead people into believing this account is affiliated with the company/business in question, the account will be permanently suspended.

What information do I need to include when reporting trademark violations?

In order to investigate trademark violations, we need the following information:

Username of the violating account (or the URL to their profile page):
Company name:
Company Twitter account (if there is one):
Your First and Last Name:
Title:
Address:
Phone:
Fax:
Company domain address:
Your company domain email address:
Registration Trademark number:
Requested Action (for example, removal of infringing account, or transfer of trademarked username to an existing company account):

How do I report a trademark violation?

Report trademark violations to Twitter's Terms of Service group by submitting a web request from
the Support home page. Once you've submitted your ticket, we?ll email you a ticket
confirmation with more information. You can check on your ticket status
anytime by visiting your Twitter Support home page and clicking on "check on your existing requests."

If you're unable to submit a request through our support form or do
not have a Twitter account yourself, please send an email with the
information described above to terms@twitter.com.

Submitted Dec 05, 2008 by crystal

What are copyright complaints?

Copyright complaints concern the unauthorized distribution or republishing of material protected by copyright law. As stated in our Terms of Service, Twitter strives to uphold all relevant copyright laws. If a profile doesn't contain an image protected by copyright or links to copyright protected materials, it is not a copyright violation.

What information do you need to process a copyright complaint?

If you believe that your Content has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide us with the following information:

A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf;

Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material;
Your contact information, including your address, telephone number, and an email address;
A statement by you that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

Please keep reading for instructions on how to contact us by fax, mail, email, or Support ticket. Faxes that do not contain ticket numbers will be discarded.

How do I file a copyright complaint?

We will accept an email with all of the required information listed above. As listed in Terms, the direct email address is copyright@twitter.com. Please submit the text in the body of your request; we discard attachments.

You can also file a complaint by visiting Twitter Support and filing a Terms of Service request. If you're logged into Twitter, you can visit Twitter Support directly from your twitter account by clicking the help link in the top navigation. If you're unable to submit a request through our support form, please send an email to copyright@twitter.com.

Faxing or mailing a hard copy

Twitter will also accept copyright complaints via fax or mail as long as they contain the ticket number associated with the email request filed, for our records. Faxes that do not contain ticket numbers will be discarded. Please include your request number on your fax cover-sheet to expedite the process. Claims can be faxed to Twitter at 415-222-0922.

Mail should be sent to:

Twitter Inc.,
Attn: Copyright Agent
795 Folsom Street, Suite 600
San Francisco, CA 94107

How are claims processed?

Twitter Support, specifically the Terms of Service group, deals with copyright complaints. All reported accounts are immediately investigated for Terms of Service violations. Twitter will, in appropriate circumstances, terminate repeat infringers. If you believe that an account holder or subscriber is a repeat infringer, please follow the instructions above to contact Twitter and provide information sufficient for us to verify that the account holder or subscriber is a repeat infringer.

Once you've submitted your ticket, we'll email you a ticket confirmation. Our Support team will be in touch with you within 24 hours. Check on your ticket status anytime by visiting your Twitter Support home page and clicking "check on your existing requests."

Submitted Jun 17, 2009 by crystal

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free website designed to provide the exchange of public content in the form of 140 characters messages sent from the web interface or from a user?s phone. All users of Twitter agree to the Terms of Service and
Privacy policy at the time of sign up, which allows us to govern the
site.

Users may have a public or private account, and choose to view the 140 character messages of other Twitter users, which range from businesses (such as Comcast, Whole Foods, or Zappos) to political
figures (such as BarackObama) to celebrities or popular accounts (such
as Oprah or Britney Spears) to normal people.

What user information does Twitter have?

Most Twitter
profile information is public, so everyone can see it. A Twitter profile contains a profile
image, background, and the status updates, or ?tweets? of the account
owner. In addition, the user has the option to fill out location,
include a URL, and write a ?one line bio? or short phrase about
themselves. The tweets on a profile page update in real time, so the
newest information is always available at the top. Public profiles also show a list of whose tweets the account owner
?follows? or subscribes to, as well as the account owner?s ?followers?
or, those who subscribe to the tweets of the account owner.

Private information requires a subpoena or court order

In accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, non-public information about Twitter users is not released unless we
have received a subpoena, court order, or other legal
process document.
Some
information we store is automatically collected, while other
information is provided at the user?s discretion. Though we do store this information, it may not be accurate if the
user has created a fake or anonymous profile. Twitter doesn?t require
email verification or identity authentication.

Data retention information

Twitter retains different information for different time periods. Twitter may retain user information longer than usual in the case of
preservation requests. Data preservation requests must be accompanied by a subpoena or court order. Preservation requests must be signed and sent on law enforcement letterhead. Requests may be sent via the methods described below, and unless otherwise required, the user will
still have access to their account.

How to request user information with a subpoena or court order

Twitter
accepts subpoenas delivered by mail or fax. In order to expedite the
process, subpoenas should include the URL of the Twitter profile in
question, and details about what specific information is required. Twitter conducts most correspondence via email, so please include an email contact so we may contact you. To contact us, email: lawenforcement@twitter.com

Only email from law enforcement domains is accepted. Non-law enforcement requests should be sent through our regular support methods. Non-law enfocement mail will be deleted.

Submitted Nov 10, 2009 by ginger

Thank you for your support and interest in Twitter and the Twitter marks. We strongly believe in the value of an open platform and encouraging the healthy growth of our special ecosystem. As part of that, it's important for users to be able to trust Twitter and not be confused about our relationship with the many people and organizations who use our marks. This document is designed to help you use our marks without having to worry about negotiating an agreement with us or talking to our lawyers. If you?d like to make any use of our marks that is not covered by this document, you must contact us at trademarks at twitter.com.

Promoting your own Account

Do:

Say "Follow us on Twitter" with the word 'Twitter' as a link to your Twitter account.
Use the current Twitter logo, current Twitter T or the Twitter buttons as a link to your account:

Say "Follow us on Twitter @username," with an optional link from '@username' to your Twitter account (for online, in print, on billboards, on the side of vans, etc.). Please replace 'username' with your actual Twitter username.

Don't:

Manipulate the logos or imply sponsorship, endorsement, or false association with Twitter, Inc.

Use anything other than the most current versions of the Twitter logos.
Use any other artwork from our site without explicit permission.

Talking about Twitter in Publications, on TV, at Conferences

Do:

Refer to "Twitter" when talking about us, and "Tweets" when talking about the messages or updates on our service.

Don't:

Make inaccurate statements about our service.

Refer to us in a way that might imply a false sense of partnership or endorsement.

Writing a Book About Twitter

Do:

Make sure the title of your book makes clear that it?s a book about Twitter, and not by Twitter. For example, ?Learning how to 'X' on Twitter? is appropriate, whereas ?The Twitter guide to 'X'" is not.

Don't:

Use a confusing book title which might imply your book is endorsed or written by us.
Use our logo on your cover or in your title. This might be confusing and imply that the book is an official Twitter book.

Use the Twitter or Tweet name to manipulate people into "get rich quick" schemes.

Using Twitter Screenshots

Do:

Use screenshots of the logged-out Twitter home page, the Twitter About Us page, or even the @twitter profile page.

Use screenshots of your own Twitter profile (with your own Tweets). You'll find your Twitter profile page at http://twitter.com/username; please replace 'username' with your actual Twitter username.

Don't

Use screenshots of other people?s profiles or Tweets without their permission.

Merchandise/Manufactured Items

Please note that we generally don?t permit use of our marks on merchandise.

Do:

Contact us at trademarks at twitter.com with a detailed proposal if you would like to request an exception.

Don't:

Use the Twitter or Tweet marks on any apparel or merchandise without our permission.

Using our Logo in your Ad or Marketing Campaign

Do:

Use the current Twitter logo or current Twitter T as a link to the Twitter service.

Use the current Twitter logo or current Twitter T to show that your product is compatible with Twitter.

Don't:

Use the marks in a way that might imply a false sense of partnership or endorsement with your brand.

Distort or alter the Twitter marks in any way.
Use the marks in a way that confuses the Twitter brand with another brand.

Naming your Application or Product, Applying for a Domain

We understand that you want your application or product that enhances the Twitter experience to be identifiable as part of the Twitter ecosystem. This is important to us too, but Twitter is also the name of our service and company, so we're cautious about potential confusion.

Do:

Name your website, product, or application with something unique. Uses of Tw-, and Twit- are generally okay with us.

Feel free to include language on your site explaining that your application is built on the Twitter platform so people understand your product.

Don't:

Use Twitter in the name of your website or application.

Register a domain containing twitter (or misspellings of twitter).

Apply for a trademark with a name including Twitter or Tweet (or similar variations thereof).

Visual Design of Your Website or Application

Do:

Design your site with unique branding and logos.

Don't:

Copy our look and feel, as this could create user confusion.

Other Things to Know about the Twitter Trademarks

The Twitter name, logo, Twitter T, Tweet, and Twitter blue bird are trademarks of Twitter, Inc. in the United States and other countries. The Twitter bird should not be used without permission of Twitter, Inc. Please remember to capitalize the T in Twitter!

For further information about use of Twitter?s name and trademarks, please contact trademarks at twitter.com.

Submitted Nov 17, 2009 by ginger

We're committed to supporting the developers who are contributing to the growing Twitter ecosystem. We've been growing too, and now have dedicated staff working with the developer community. Unfortunately, as Twitter grows, we also become a more visible target for spammers, hackers, and other malicious parties.

These ne'er-do-wells sometimes use legitimate third-party applications to more easily spread spam, and abuse other Twitter users. This help page has information on how to protect your application from becoming a target of malicious folks. It also outlines our policy and process when we discover abuse or spam coming from a particular program or application.

Security for your Application

Our Security Best Practices section in the API wiki has detailed information on developing secure applications. You can also visit the API Support Information Page for helpful links to Twitter API resources

If you've discovered a security issue that directly affects Twitter, please email security@twitter.com.

Preventing Spam and Abuse through your Application

We assume you don't want your application used for abuse, and we're here to work with developers to prevent spammers from targeting your application. If we start to notice (or receive user reports) of spam coming from your program, we'll reach out to you to try and remedy the situation. Often, developers are able to make minor changes to a feature that will make their service less attractive to hackers or spammers, without impacting their legitimate users.

If you're unwilling or unable to control the abuse coming into the Twitter system, or are disingenuous in your attempts to make a more secure application, we may request specific feature changes. If you can't, or are unwilling, to make feature adjustments to prevent abuse on Twitter, we reserve the right to revoke your OAuth token or ban your application from the Twitter ecosystem. Developers can appeal revocation of OAuth tokens; please see this help page for more information.

It's much easier for us to both contact you, and evaluate improvements, if you're using the more secure OAuth protocol. We recommend all developers move to OAuth as soon as possible, since basic authentication will be deprecated in the near future. Applications that are reported for spammy behavior will be required to immediately switch to OAuth if they are not already using it.

We absolutely want to work with authentic developers to find a solution to prevent abuse and spam without impacting the legitimate users of their applications. If you've disabled a feature in the past because of abuse, and would like to help finding ways to reintroduce the feature without attracting spammers, please contact us by filing a support ticket (select "API Developer Questions" from the drop-down).

Reporting Spam and Abuse to Twitter

If you're seeing spam and abuse coming through your application, you should alert our Trust and Safety team. We can investigate mass-created spam and help relieve the efforts of your team. Please file a support ticket, selecting "API Developer Questions" from the drop-down; if appropriate, we can also provide a more direct admin interface for easy reporting.

Note: If you're building a Twitter client, you can also empower the end-users of your application to block and report spam profiles using the API. The Twitter API Documentation has information in the section on Spam Reporting Methods.

Developing Features that are Unattractive to Spammers

When building your application, you'll want to make sure you're familiar with the API Guidelines, the Twitter Rules, and our Automation Guidelines and Best Practices.

Traditionally, we've experienced a higher level of abuse coming from particular sets of features, such as:

Recurring or Scheduled Tweets
Automated Following and Unfollowing

Automated @replies
Automated affiliate advertising

Twitter's Guidelines on Automation provides a detailed discussion of allowed automation for our end-users. To avoid becoming a target of abuse, or having the legitimate users of your application suspended for rules violations, please be careful to avoid building features that allow users to easily violate these guidelines. If you have any questions or would like any feedback on planned features, please feel free to contact us!

Contacting Twitter's API Support Team

If you have a specific question about your application, please file a support ticket and select "API Developer Questions" from the drop-down.

Submitted Oct 27, 2009 by ginger

How can I tell if my app is suspended?

When we suspend applications, a notification email is automatically sent to the email address associated with the Twitter account. You can also view the status of your apps in the applications section of your Twitter account. Suspended applications say "Inactive" under their name:

Why are applications suspended?

Apps are generally suspended for violating API Rules, or for failing to provide a meaningful or functional application URL. Please read the rules to find out more about specific violations.

How do I find out why my app was suspended, or appeal the decision?

Please include the following information when requesting additional information about your application, or when filing an appeal:

Application Name

Account the application was registered to

Please submit a support request with the information above; select "API Developer Questions" from the drop-down menu. Once you've submitted your ticket, we?ll email you a ticket confirmation with more information. You can check on your ticket status anytime by visiting Twitter Support and clicking "check on your existing requests."

If you're unable to submit a request through our help form, please send an email to api@twitter.com. Please send all information as text in the body of your email; attachments are discarded.

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