Photo by Orin Zebest
Although not nearly as catastrophic as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
You know how you can read some books and later can’t even remember reading them? (Or is that just me…) The Handmaid’s Tale is not one of those books. I read it in the mid-80s and it’s one that I’ve never forgotten.
In that book, the government froze the bank accounts of all women and transferred control to their husbands or other male relatives. While this was a small part of what the whole story was about, it was electronic banking that allowed it to happen easily. As an ex-programmer, I know just how simple that might be with the right access.
And I assume it was just as easy to suspend a whole load of Twitter accounts on Sunday (July 5th). Apparently the intent was aimed at spammers, but many legitimate users were accidentally caught in the crossfire. Twitter is working hard to restore those legitimate accounts, but it is one of those things that makes you think about the processes you have in place. Like a computer crash reminds you that you haven’t backed up in quite a while.
Mari Smith, a very helpful and well known personality on the social media circuit, was one of the casualties. Thankfully Mari is back in the loop now and she has written a great article on the “Lessons Learned From Temporary Twitter Account Suspension.”
I will add one lesson. These accounts were just suspended – so they can be restored intact. In other circumstances your account could be completely deleted or corrupted in some way. It’s time to get our backup process up to speed. I did a search for “Twitter backup” and “social media backup” and found some applications that might help, but I haven’t used any of these so can’t offer suggestions. Oh, and don’t forget your site backup as well – especially if you are on a hosted server like Blogger or WordPress.com.
The moral of the story? Just like a good scout – Be Prepared.
I’d love to hear what you use to backup your social media accounts. Do you have any favourites or tricks you use?
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