Will Johnston's dashboard

That could be totaly terrific, this would make me stop using Twitter to respond to my friends using twitter...
This would make control my web life from pownce !!
Plz kind pownce developer make my dream come true!

solved.

And it starts again. Just sent this to Twitter:

From: SanFranciscoJack [mailto:sanfranciscojack@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2008 12:29 PM
To: 'support@twitter.com'
Subject: RE: spam request from sanfranciscojak {272372}

Hello Crystal,

I appreciate your help.

It’s happening again though. This morning I turned my phone on and came up with 9 new messages identical to the deluge messages that I originally complained about. I would like to point out that I have turned off updates to my phone, or so I thought. I changed the settings after the last problem and I’ll double check now, but I won’t touch anything until I hear back from you so you can troubleshoot the issue at your end.

These messages are from Twitter.com update (mobile) and read:

rozsavage: You have sent an invalid keyword. Your message was not delivered. Begin your message with the keyword and try again or contact the compa...

Oh, I just looked at my phone again and more messages have arrived. They seem to be coming in groups of 3 or so.

Hoping something can be done,

Jack

Pownce and Twitter are different species. Pownce is a place to share stuff with your friends, while Twitter is a place to interact on a consistent basis (even if they are rate limiting).

The Twitter rate limit status is currently at 20 requests per hour now. It went up to 50, but they had some issues and had to bring it back down to 20. It's frustrating.

Perhaps a bit slow on the uptake, but I'm pretty impressed with how Twitter handled this.

Hi Jack,

I figure I'll just reply to your thread rather than your email since all of my other replies are here anyway :)

It looks like Roz was using an application other than Twitter to help update her profile. The methods she was using caused her to send out a lot of Twitter messages in a short time. Since you're following her, with device notifications set to ON, and updates for Roz set to ON, you received all of the updates on your device.

Twitter only sent out the messages that Roz legitimately sent. The accident occurred because Roz accidentally sent out more messages than intended when using another application that got stuck in a loop. She did post in her profile that it was unintentional.

Our international users have a limit of 250 messages per week, but we do not place limitations on how many SMS messages people can receive over 40404. We have considered the idea of allowing people to cap their own incoming SMS by adding an "Only send me x amount of messages" option in the devices page, but we've been busy with other things, so for now it's just an idea.

One thing that may be helpful is setting a sleep time in your devices page:

http://twitter.com/devices

This way no messages will come in while you're sleeping. Again, I'm really sorry this happened to you, but truly glad to know it was unintentional on Roz's part.

Finally, we're not looking at the matter as closed. The last thing we want is to leave people in the lurch when something doesn't go as expected. We're working on better ways to handle message delivery all around, and this is definitely something we've added to the list.

If you can fax a copy of your bill to Twitter at my attention so we have a record of what happened, we'll work on a solution that doesn't leave you feeling like you're holding the bag :)

Twitter fax is: 415-896-2062

Thanks!
Crystal

I'm glad they let you backdate that option. – mdy, on June 16, 2008 23:30

Jack: That is great to hear! I am so glad that they allowed you to retroactively add the unlimited messages. I was really bummed about this. So glad to hear it.

Hello Crystal and thank you for getting back to me about this.

I'm sorry I haven't responded before this. I have just faxed you a sample of the usage from my T-Mobile account showing some of the txt messages I received. I can't send them all to you since there are 24 pages and the way T-Mobile has their site set up I have to open and print each page separately.

It doesn't really matter though since I have spoken to T-Mobile and added a backdated "unlimited text messaging" option to my phone, reducing the bill for this episode to $15.00. Not something I particularly want to pay, but well below the pain threshold.

I appreciate your kind and timely attention to this matter and consider myself satisfied. Not happy mind you, but only enraged at the general unfairness of life, which I suppose I shouldn't hold Twitter accountable for. :)

Thank you once again,

San Francisco Jack

Crystal: That is a huge help and a great explanation. I think a cap is a great idea, too, when you have time to implement it.

I use the sleep function, and I love it. Actually, I've stopped using my alarm clock and I now just let myself wake up to the sound of tweets from my iPhone. Seriously. See the power that Twitter has? I want it to awaken me in the morning. That's powerful.

I'm extremely impressed that you are even going further than just explaining it and considering providing restitution, which I think is downright amazing. When I see that this topic started with accusations of incompetence and has come this far, well, it makes me happy, too.

Reading this makes me happy. 8-) – mdy, on June 14, 2008 01:55

Hi Jack,

I figure I'll just reply to your thread rather than your email since all of my other replies are here anyway :)

It looks like Roz was using an application other than Twitter to help update her profile. The methods she was using caused her to send out a lot of Twitter messages in a short time. Since you're following her, with device notifications set to ON, and updates for Roz set to ON, you received all of the updates on your device.

Twitter only sent out the messages that Roz legitimately sent. The accident occurred because Roz accidentally sent out more messages than intended when using another application that got stuck in a loop. She did post in her profile that it was unintentional.

Our international users have a limit of 250 messages per week, but we do not place limitations on how many SMS messages people can receive over 40404. We have considered the idea of allowing people to cap their own incoming SMS by adding an "Only send me x amount of messages" option in the devices page, but we've been busy with other things, so for now it's just an idea.

One thing that may be helpful is setting a sleep time in your devices page:

http://twitter.com/devices

This way no messages will come in while you're sleeping. Again, I'm really sorry this happened to you, but truly glad to know it was unintentional on Roz's part.

Finally, we're not looking at the matter as closed. The last thing we want is to leave people in the lurch when something doesn't go as expected. We're working on better ways to handle message delivery all around, and this is definitely something we've added to the list.

If you can fax a copy of your bill to Twitter at my attention so we have a record of what happened, we'll work on a solution that doesn't leave you feeling like you're holding the bag :)

Twitter fax is: 415-896-2062

Thanks!
Crystal

this is all kinda interesting, but i'm gonna go ahead and say twitter's not responsible for this. twitter's role is to deliver outgoing messages, valid ones and errors messages alike, and if there's one warning they give us, it's to make sure you think about your SMS plan with your cell provider. i didn't, and i paid an extra $100 on a bill because i didn't think about it.

i'm not trying to argue, because it seems you keep a good handle on your plan and this was totally unexpected (wherein i just underestimated my followers and got too many in a month - my fault)...but i think i'm suggesting i'd understand if twitter drew the line and it wasn't in your favor.

best of luck, earnestly. – dblogged, on June 13, 2008 23:07

So I'm guessing that, having been able to place the source of the error outside the Twitter system Twitter will consider this matter closed.

Of course this still leaves me holding the big expensive bag for what I see as giant design flaw in the Twitter system.

Jack Replies:
_______________________________
From: SanFranciscoJack [mailto:sanfranciscojack@hotmail.com]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 3:34 PM
To: 'support@twitter.com'
Subject: RE: spam request from sanfranciscojak {272372}

Hello Crystal,

Exactly how does Agile and Twitter get stuck in a loop? As I understand it Rozsavage sends out a message to the Twitter system and the Twitter system then updates her followers, in my case via SMS.

Where does Agile enter into this?

Even given that these were messages which were erroneously generated outside of your system I still do not believe that Twitter should have been passing on such an enormous volume of identical content. Do you have any kind of spamming filters at all? I mean, if this can be done to me accidentally what is to prevent someone from sending out a huge number of unwanted messages on purpose?

Thank you for your help,

Jack

Latest from Twitter:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: support@twitter.com [mailto:support@twitter.com]
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 3:16 PM
To: sanfranciscojack@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: spam request from sanfranciscojak {272372}

Hi Jack,

Unfortunately, it looks like Roz sent out a bunch of bogus updates by accidentally getting the updating stuck in a loop. The updates were all legit in that they were posted by the person, not us, but it looks like they made a mistake in how they were updating:

http://twitter.com/rozsavage/statuses...

"Ack. Agile and Twitter got into a loop. My sincere apologies. I will update Twitter from Roz's SMS messages by hand from now on. (-Leo) 04:07 PM June 07, 2008 from web"

I'm so sorry about that!

Crystal

Nope, I'm not tracking anything. I had just signed up for twitter a few days before hand.

Is it possible that you were tracking a keyword that is very common? Do you use the track feature?