UPDATE: Read the Day 2 Report Card

Show your support for StatTweets by retweeting this message. (Thanks for the 1,000 retweets)

Check out the discussion at Hacker News and TechCrunch. More coverage at Mashable and FT.com. If you are new to StatSheet, learn more here.

Overview

Back in December I created a new site for the StatSheet Network called StatTweets. In order to take advantage of the growing Twitter phenomenon, I wanted to create Twitter representations of the team pages you find on StatSheet (example here). (The StatSheet Network is all about trying to do interesting things with sports stats.) Instead of creating a single Twitter account and blasting every sport and team through it like so many large sports media companies do, I wanted to make up for Twitter's lack of filtering capabilities by creating accounts for each team page. So I did. My wife and I created 650 accounts over a long weekend for each NBA, NFL, College Basketball and College Football team. Then I plugged the Twitter API into the backend data processing I was already doing for StatSheet.com and started tweeting interesting stats, news, live score updates, point spread updates, etc. I even added the ability to retrieve stats dynamically via Twitter using the #StatMe hash tag. Read about it here.

In just 4 months, the StatTweet accounts gained over 63,000 followers. And that's with me doing very lttile marketing or promotion of the accounts. Twitter.com went from driving no traffic to StatSheet.com to being the #2 source of traffic behind Google. The feedback I got was overwhelmingly positive (even from TechCrunch).

Two weeks ago I noticed one of my accounts was suspended. Then I discovered all of the accounts had been suspended (actually they missed two of them: @NuggetsStats and @SunsStats UPDATE: Twitter just suspended these accounts now too, thanks for that). I opened a ticket with Twitter Customer Support and got back the following less-than-helpful response:

Hi,

The accounts were suspended for violation of our Terms of Service:

1. Copyright infringement

2. Mass account creation

3. Squatting

Please honor Twitter's Terms of Service accordingly. We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

Cheers, 

Twitter Support

Let me address each one of their issues:

1) Copyright infringement - They said because I used team logos I was infringing on copyright. I've talked to two lawyers and they don't think Twitter OR the teams would have a case. Why? A) the images used are very small and low resolution, B) I'm not pretending to be an official team account and C) there are dozens of other accounts using these logos on Twitter. The last point is perhaps most important. To have a successful copyright/trademark infringement case, you have to show that you are going after all known offenders. Do a quick search on "Celtics" on Twitter. There are 9 accounts using the exact same logo. And that's just the accounts with "Celtics" in the name. I can only imagine the total number of accounts using that logo would be at least 2 or 3 dozen. It is clear Twitter has singled me out in this case.

That said, I would take down the logos if Twitter feels strongly about it. But guess what? They never asked me despite their own documentation stating they would work with accounts that are providing a service to the community:

"Accounts created to help a community or provide information will be contacted with the appropriate steps to take to keep the account"

2) Mass account creation - Ok, they got me on this one. But what is the issue here in my case? I can understand you don't want spammers creating a bunch of unnecessary accounts, but each of my accounts represent a discrete entity (namely, a team's page on StatSheet.com). There are dozens of account networks on Twitter (e.g., BuzzTap), so why aren't they being targeted too? How many is too many? 5, 10, 100 accounts? And I didn't use any automated means to create the accounts (I wish). My wife and I created each account by hand over a weekend.

3) Squatting - This is the most bogus one of all. Because some of my college football accounts hadn't been updated in a couple of months, they accused me of "squatting" on the names. There haven't been any updates to those accounts because college football season is over! Those accounts are just as inactive as their pages on StatSheet.com. As soon as college football season comes around, the tweets will start back up. If inactivity is going to be the bar for what defines squatting, there are millions of squatters on Twitter.

Conclusion

I waited semi-patiently for 2 weeks in the hopes that Twitter would come around, but @Caroline and @Crystal (Twitter Support) have been unresponsive other than a couple of form responses. I'm sure now that Twitter is post-Oprah, my request is at the bottom of the priority queue. But aren't they biting the hand that feeds them? I'm providing a unique information service on Twitter and they shut me down without so much as a warning. To make it worse, they haven't even responded to my repeated inquiries. This doesn't bode well for other businesses that are trying to use Twitter. We are all at the whim of a Twitter Support person's interpretation of how you are using your accounts and how that complies with their TOS.

To bring the Heat, you must Retweet!

The only way I know to fight back is to have Twitterers show support for StatTweets by retweeting this message. Twitter hasn't listened to me, but maybe they would listen to YOU. Let's get #SaveStatTweets trending on Twitter!!

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

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