That’s the word that Twitter chose to use when it locked me out of my own account. To wit: “Locked out! We’ve temporarily locked your account after too many failed attempts to sign in. Please chillax for a few, then try again.”

Here is the (urban) dictionary definition of the word, “chillax“.

I did “chill out” and waited another 24 hours. I got the same message just now, which means that my main home computer appears to be permanently locked out of Twitter. In the interim, I sent a plea to one of the investors in the company in an attempt to get my account unlocked. Here is the official response of the company, forwarded by the investor: “Sounds like he changed his password but didn’t change it on a 3rd party app attempting to access Twitter. Since lockouts are IP-based, the hacker would have to be inside his home. *grin*. He should shut all his Twitter-accessing things down, give it an hour and a half or so, and then try again. :)”

Sounds like? Actually, my third party apps (on iPhone and Blackberry) are working just fine, able to update with new tweets and show me the tweet stream. (I changed the password instantly on all my third party apps, since I’m not an idiot.) This condition only exists on the Firefox browser on the computer inside my home (as was so grinningly observed by the Twitter employee), where I have not tried repeatedly to log into my Twitter account (since I’m only here at night). Now that I have changed my password, Twitter is recording multiple failed attempts to log into my account, attempts made by the hacker. *grin*

From the perspective of my 30 years of experience watching companies from a distance, this all looks and feels to me like Twitter is a company that considers its users a nuisance and customer service a real pain in the ass.

Twitter does actually have a problem right now with having its DM (Direct Message) feature hijacked. (I know that other users are reporting the same problem.) When the DM feature is hijacked, the user community recommends that the user change his/her password to prevent further phishing messages being sent out via the DM channel. But, once you do change your password, whoever had previously hijacked it continues to try to use the account (since it’s just a software robot sending the messages) and creates a condition of multiple failed attempts to log into your account. Twitter blocks your account both from yourself and the hacker.

The Twitter employee’s assumption (without any investigation into the situation) that the hacker would have to be inside my house is totally incorrect. Regardless of all the business model and valuation issues that surround Twitter, I certainly hope the company adopts a different attitude toward its users. It’s tempting when you have a lot of users who don’t pay for the service they use to view those users as non-economic or a cost center. But that’s a lousy attitude to have if you really want to build a business with long term value.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.