Social Media News: Twitter to add new features?

UPDATE: Apparently, @twitteronnotice is not what many have thought it was supposed to be...back to Louis Gray for the answers:

My late-night speculation on Twitter readying a new feature uncovered not a new way for users to send notices to others on the site, but instead, one of the multiple internal-only accounts used to raise company morale and togetherness.

Definitely go to Gray's blog for the hilarious explanation from Twitter.




Twitter has you on notice. Compared to Facebook, Twitter is still a pretty small company with a tiny support team.  With it's explosion of users over the past year or so, this team has been overwhelmed trying to keep up with spam accusations, suspension of accounts, abusive behaviour - you know, your regular mixed cocktail of internet social norms.  According to Louis Gray, respected tech blogger, Twitter might be giving some support to their, ummm, support team.

A new account, called @twitteronnotice, says cryptically "You're On Notice!", featuring an avatar of Uncle Sam glaringly pointing his finger in your direction. The account even calls itself "Minus One", a common Internet tally for somebody or something being modded down by the community. (e.g. +1 and -1)

Get enough negative karma associated with your account, and you might see your account go on notice. While no public details are yet available for this private account, it could be a way for the company to try and avoid user attrition through aggressive account deletions, and put accounts in something of a holding pattern for violating the terms of service.

To add more credence to this rumour, the account is only being followed by a select group of Twitter staff members.  Finally, as many already know, it's impossible to create a Twitter account with the word "Twitter" in it - unless you work for the company, of course.  So it's pretty much guaranteed that Twitter is working on something here.

In other Twitter account news.  Are you an active participant in #FollowFriday?  Twitter might be attempting to make it easier for you to get the word out about your favourite tweeps. The account @TwitterShoutout has also been discovered by Louis Gray, suggesting that the account will be used as a new action to promote your favourite people on Twitter.  Gray speculates that a new list may appear in your profile that keeps track of all the tweeps who give you a "shout out", kind of like recommendations in LinkedIn.  One of Twitter's goals with the explosion of users in the last while has been to promote ways for discovering people as Twitter get's pretty boring if you don't have anyone interesting to follow.