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Can Twitter users link out?
Sunday, November 22, 2009 by Dave Winer.
I have several accounts that I use for testing Twitter apps. One of them, bullmancuso, was shut down last October. A few weeks ago I petitioned to have the account restored. 
This evening I got an email from the Twitter support person BFF, who explained:
"Your account was suspended because our specialists found that your tweets were primarily links to other sites and not personal updates, a violation of Twitter Rules."
http://help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/18311
It's true of that account but it's also true of the NYTimes and many other news oriented Twitter sites.
I suggest they take another look at this.
And it's a reminder once again that we're playing in someone else's ballpark here, and they make the rules. This is not in any way like the Internet.
Update: Alex Howard quotes Twitter co-CEO Biz Stone saying Twitter "has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates."
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Dave Winer, 54, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.
"The protoblogger." - NY Times.
"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.
One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.
"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.
"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.
"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.
Dave Winer
© Copyright 1994-2009 Dave Winer
.Last update: 11/22/2009; 3:46:21 PM Pacific. "It's even worse than it appears."
