Update: If you follow @Support, you can DM them (even though they don’t follow you) and ask your question that way. Though it doesn’t always work. For what is often a better but sometimes slower way to contact Twitter support, read on:
Top Issues
- Why Twitter closed your support request without reading it
- Each time you file a support ticket you go to the back of the line (Twitter handles them in order received) so only file one ticket, respond to the email they send you, and wait. If you file multiple tickets frequently enough, it only guarantees that you will NEVER get a response.
- If you’ve filed a ticket at http://bit.ly/TWICKET and didn’t get an email response, check here: http://support.twitter.com/tickets
- Can’t even get a ticket filed? Try these tips.
- Trouble logging in to Twitter? Here’s what you need to know
- Feature “darkmode”
- Suspensions
- Spam
- General twitter problems
- How twitter handles problems
Account hacked?
- If you’ve been suspended, read this first.
- Change your password. If you can’t login, have Twitter reset your password.
- Revoke bad, unfamiliar or unused apps.
- If you’re still having problems, let Twitter know your situation at http://bit.ly/TWICKET
- Write one or more tweets letting your followers know what happened.
- Contact anyone who unfollowed you because of the hack, letting them know what happened, and that you’ve fixed the problem according to these steps.
- Tell others how you fixed your problem: Twitter accounts are often hacked in groups, and if you were hacked, it’s likely others were too, and are searching for information on what to do.
Account suspended?
- First, check your email inbox for any notification from Twitter.
- You many also want to read the Official Twitter Rules to see why you might have been suspended. If you’ve been used automated tools to follow or unfollow users, read the Twitter’s following best practices.
- Next follow these steps to confirm that your account was actually suspended and to appeal suspension. Alternatively, remember that you can you can follow @Support and send them a DM (you used to also be able to send an email to suspended@twitter.com, but apparently they no longer monitor that).
If you didn’t get any email notification, you’ve filed a ticket regarding suspension and it’s been awhile and you haven’t heard anything back yet, send a tweet something this:
@Delbius my ticket number is #12345 want to know if/why my account was suspended & what I can do
Suspension is not always a death knell!
Accounts can be permanently suspended. But for lesser infractions, or for some first-time infractions, accounts can be restored/unsuspended. Just because it was suspended does not always mean you can’t get it back. It DOES mean though that changes to your practices MUST be made or problems fixed.
Twitter has a number of “tests” for an account before it comes under review or suspension. They don’t divulge all the flags against you but point out the main area they feel you need to improve in.
Be sure to read Automation Rules and Best Practices
Granted, Twitter could provide more details to users whose accounts become suspended. A common error that can get your account suspended is automated following/unfollowing combined with links that are clearly from feeds. This marks an account as possibly fully automated which Twitter does not want.
Missing Tweets?
There are several different kinds of issues that could be happening here:
- Your Tweets and Hashtags are not showing up in search.
- Your Tweet count is incorrect.
- You’re missing a group of Tweets from my Profile timeline.
- You’re missing mentions and/or @replies.
All these issues and more are explained at “Help! My Tweets Are Missing!”
What to do if you have a general problem
- First, you might try clearing your browser’s cache.
- Also good is to check Twitter status.
- You may also want to check detailed status for different parts of the Twitter service. (And even more detailed.)
- It’s never wrong to file a ticket with Twitter letting them know you have a problem and are seeking help. Watch your email for a response after filing a ticket.
- You can also check Twitter known issues, search for help about your Twitter issue, or check the Twitter FAQ. If you leave a comment on a Twitter known issues page, Twitter may be in touch with a temporary solution in advance of fixing the problem permanently. However, if you notify Twitter about your problem by filing a ticket at http://bit.ly/twicket you will often receive an email suggesting possible known issues to read.
- You might want to read this interesting article to better understand how Twitter has organized their help system.
- Besides http://bit.ly/twicket, you can also reporting bugs or problems to Twitter via http://twitter.com/HELP
SPECIAL TIP: If your problem is on Twitter.com, you can reset your browser cache (which is known to fix some problems) by using your keyboard. Here’s an approach that works for most: Hold down the “Ctrl” key (command for Mac) and press the F5 (function) key at the same time. If that didn’t work, see http://j.mp/ClearCache.
Options for help outside of Twitter
Many things are not Twitter problems, per se. It’s always a good idea to search for a support website or support account relevant to your problem if it’s an application or third-party service, such as TweetDeck, TwitPic, etc.
- You can ask other users for help on the Twitter page at GetSatisfaction. Twitter used to say they monitored this site. Now they say instead “We encourage users to help each other get the most out of Twitter. Often the community provides answers and solutions faster than we can respond directly.”
- Searching Twitter to see if others have your problem can also be helpful. Try adding keywords to this example search for problems.
- There are also a variety of third-party services that try to help Twitter users get all kinds of questions answered. One example is the TweetQA service.
- And of course you can always send an @message to other users that you think might be helpful. Don’t bother sending @messages with questions to @Twitter though. Your best bet if you want a response from Twitter is to file a ticket.
- You can also try ComplaintCommunity which is also on Twitter as @CompComm
There are several solutions to help you get less spam on Twitter. A good one to try first is TwitBlock.
Twitter “tracks tens of thousands of metrics in real time” to find problems. They also watch incoming trouble tickets, and comments users post on the Twitter known issues pages. They don’t pay much attention to tweets to most employees, so if you feel you must send a tweet a Twitter account like @Support, file a ticket first and include your ticket number in any communication.
How Twitter fixes problems
Twitter handles trouble tickets in the order they are received. For some tickets, you may receive an email with suggestions on what to do, and a note telling you to let Twitter know if you still have a problem. If you get this kind of email and fail to respond to Twitter that you “still have a problem” your ticket will be closed. So, watch your email after filing a ticket. Also, if you have left a comment about a problem you are having on a known issues page, you may receive a tweet with further information.
“Feature Darkmode”
This is an annoying method Twitter uses to keep things running when there are problems, or when things are being worked on. Basically, features are intentionally turned off! Learn more about why Twitter “breaks” it’s own feature here. Also, realize that if you get a FailWhale, sometimes its just a slow server, and if you reload the web page, you’ll get a faster server…or at least you’ll get to see the page you’re trying to visit
How Twitter has improved
UPDATE: In June, 2011, Twitter announced its new search and photo sharing services. Twitter engineering put out this blog post explaining the new details of how search would work.
Twitter’s biggest improvement was to switch to a queuing technology called Unicorn. This caused them to use 30% less CPU and much less memory on their servers. It was such a big improvement, it allowed them to deploy many fixes and new features without downtime.
John Adams of Twitter has stated “[garbage collection and] SQL problems are root of most of our issues.” Considering that, it is disturbing that Twitter recently decided to halt moving away from SQL for tweet storage, at least for the time being. To help take the load off servers, Twitter stores some things for up to 60 seconds to speed up your access to “real time” information.
On October 6, Twitter announced a new search architecture that would let them index roughly 50 times more tweets per second than they were currently getting. The new system is also “extremely versatile and extensible,” which Twitter hints will be used to “build cool new features faster and better.” And in late 2010, this information about how Twitter is using NoSQL was released. One tidbit: Twitter now logs 80 different categories of data. See also (below): “How Twitter analyzes social graphs.”
The geeky details
John Adams and Nick Kallen of Twitter in the video and slideshow below describes all the geeky details of how Twitter handles issues. Instrumentation and logging is critical at Twitter. Here is one of the key diagrams from the video:
Big Data in Real-Time at Twitter
How Twitter is changing their infrastructure in 2011:






{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for all the great info
Thanks for all the concise information. Keep up the good work!
Write anytime if you need help, David
how do you get so many followers and following..=]
If you want to get more followers, dig through some of these tips:
Use Twitter to get influential people to help you.
Thanks for information.
I am a greenhorn-user, so I need indeed your help.
Best regards
Ulrike Singer-Bayrle
You’re very welcome, Ulrike!
Thanks Dave Larson, for this article on “In The Belly of The Whale: How To Get Your Twitter Problem Fixed” I shared it with my followers.
David,
Thank you for such invaluable resource information. I’ll be sure to share with my followers. You rock!
Solicit help. Facing problem with Twitter, who can help me?
Offer unconditional apology for unsolicited mail.
Any advice for me, please?
Reason was not known to me but got a suspension ticket from Twitter about 12 hours back.(Bangladesh time ,GMT+6hoirs)
Perhaps unknowingly I violated their regulation.
After a long effort (about 6hours) I could activate my Twitter account.
Suspension ticket was removed from my home page and Twitter started twittering.
I can tweet, I can re tweet.
Surprisingly my Twitter home page showing Following “0″ , Followers “0″.
I do not see any Followers or Following on my home page?
Question # 1. How I can get back my previous followers and following?
Question # 2. Further, receiving e mail that people are following me but I do not see them on my home page.
Question #3. As a test case, I went to the Twitter profile of your one, Lady Solveigh, Poet Jetrotmans , Dr Das and Mr Lucas. I click on their follow links ( In a small box) and visualize tick sign. I received to auto response through e mail from Lady Solveigh and Poet Jetrotmans that they are following me. Came to know some others (about seven) also following me. But the scenario of home page is same as before.
I can visit different option of my twitter and can retweets also.
Can any one advice me what to do?
Regards,
Zahir shamsery
@shamsery
You can ask @Delbius about reasons why if your ticket doesn’t give you enough info. Also, better to contact us for support help via Twitter–we are able to respond faster there. You can create a new account to use for Twitter communication. I’ve also tweeted you on Twitter.
several days ago I was surprised to find myself suspended and I filed several service requests and gotten nowhere.
Any hints?
4386421 is the service ticket and I’ve even tried sending email to suspended@twitter.com and got auto response that it is no longer monitored.
Michaelarothman is the ID.
As mentioned at “Why Twitter closed your support request without reading it,” each time you file a new ticket, you go to the back of the line, unfortunately. Also mentioned there is to be sure you have replied to your last ticket, and then wait.
So by filing multiple tickets, you’ve introduced delays, and if you haven’t replied to any of them, they will be closed
Great information … thanks for sending!
You’re very welcome, Diane!
Great info, I learned alot about twitter from this article, Thank You
You’re very welcome, Ian! Basically a compilation of most-requested/most-needed information.
U asked if you could help. I tried to send you a DM. Doesn’t work if you don’t follow me.
But thanks anyway.
Your account is protected. You have to accept my request to follow you before it will work.
I protected my tweets so If someone is following me, I usually online via web to accept the request. Can I use my cell phone to accept it? Thank you
What Twitter app do you use? Are you looking for a Twitter app recommendation?
I used Twitter for Blackberry and Uber Twitter. Yes, what kind of app I can use?
Those are good. You might want to check out http://j.mp/FixMyBB
How Do i show my face in my picture on twitter?
Here’s how to do that: http://support.twitter.com/articles/127871-how-to-change-your-profile-picture-or-information You’ll need a picture where your face is in the center of the image.
Hi
Could you explain the use of # marks to me. Should I use them around specific words in my tweets or do I set up a seach that sends me people tweets when they use those words?
Many thanks!
They are called “hashtags,” and here is the short answer: A http://bit.ly/TwitterHashtag can be used as a http://bit.ly/HashPhrase & is fun to track via: http://bit.ly/eiSVPB.
If you’d like to help educate others about hashtags, you can send them this link: http://bit.ly/LearnHashtags .
thanks for all your efforts..volcano about to explode here (very rare occurrence) You can prolly hear and feel it all the way in the 1000 lake state…..;)
thanks for the tips…..i’ve been having a problem with someone using my name in their spam.
Yeah, that can be REALLY frustrating!
Greetings all…when i try tweeting, the tweet just disappears when am done typing and wanting to paste on the wall
What application are you using? If you’re trying to tweet from Twitter.com, try http://j.mp/FixBrowser first, and try switching between http: and https: mode
Puede que no se permita a tu cuenta llevar a cabo esta acción. Intenta finalizar la sesión e iniciarla de nuevo.
ayudenme no puedo solucionar esto
Twitter ha sido la solución de problemas últimamente. Inténtelo de nuevo, e intentar http://bit.ly/FixBrowser
very nice and helpful post, I bookmarked it so I can get back to it if I had any problem in the future, thanks.
Tweet us anytime if we can help in any way, Khaled.
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