Without Warning, Twitter Kills StatTweets

As a side note this is reason I've always believed building an business/app of any importance on-top of another site is just crazy. You're at their mercy and there's nothing you can ever do to stop them shutting you out.

I think Twitter here is making the correct decision.<p>I know it isn't happy for you, RobbieStats, but the ramifications for them, whether you are breaking the law, or they are through allowing you to do it, are tremendously not fun. As a business they need to err on the side of caution. Look what Youtube went through with Viacom and some other content creators.<p>Also, I think your article says that to have a case against you for trademark infringement, they have to go after "everyone" who infringes, but I don't believe that is true, I think they only have to defend it, but i don't know exactly what that means or the extent to which it must be defended to be defended at all.<p>Also sports franchises are pretty ruthless. They will sue you in court and they will sue Twitter in court and they will win or it will cost you and twitter a lot of money and it's just not worth it.<p>Also, I believe the actual numbers are owned by the industry as well. You have to have written permission to reprint the statistics. If I remember correctly, according to the copyright blurb at the beginning of games, techincally, you aren't even supposed to <i>talk</i> about the game after the game!<p>It's crazy, but that's what happens when there's a lot of money at stake, people get crazy...

Without warning Twitter shuts down... 650 accounts controlled by the same people.<p>You don't say.

I'm curious: did you at any point contact Twitter for their blessing (of your 650 accounts for this particular use)? I meant, before they started suspending your accounts? Or even before you created the accounts?

Twitter is very open with how they like and don't like their system to be used. They are the most open company I can think of with their API. I can guarantee this wouldn't come as a surprise to the service maker. This is coming from someone who makes an application that heavily uses twitter.

In addition to the multiple accounts which break TOC, it might also be a direction in which they want to go with their "secret business models." This might be loosely supported by the trending topics added to the user pages, but this is largely due to my speculation.

And that my friends is why a business should never have all its eggs in one basket or platform if you will

They have blocked my friends @f1 account too. <a href="http://veetrag.net/2009/05/04/twitter-suspends-f1/" rel="nofollow">http://veetrag.net/2009/05/04/twitter-suspends-f1/</a>

Since they post odds, this may be more about the wire wager act, which prohibits interstate transmission of sports gambling information.

Perhaps you should deal with the API staff and not the support staff. You're probably familiar with the dev list, right? Try contacting Doug Williams on this.