So much wrong with this (feel free to add more numbered points):

1. The account was already popular (i.e., it served a purpose): 4000+ followers.

2. The account was already active with plenty of tweets.

3. No warning. No notice.

4. No back-up of the tweets.

5. The new account is clearly some useless social media expert bullshit.

6. In their defence, the new user claims not to have been informed of how this was going to be handled.

I perfectly understand the general concept of fighting user name squatters, but this just makes no sense to me from any point of view.

Is there any nasty legislation that can penalize Twitter for having accounts misrepresenting the official namesake?

Given how often this happens with Twitter, Facebook and ever other Corp-owned namespace the more I appreciate the clear ownership status afforded by DNS, despite it's many flaws.

It's also why I put my domain on my business card but not my Twitter, all it'd take is an account hack and some spam or a backhander from some firm and it would't be mind anymore with no recourse whatsoever.

Sadly this is common for twitter to do without contracting the party.

For over a year I ran a bot called @amazon which when messaged would look up the price of a book using the amazon api and respond to the user.

When amazon decided to join twitter, they contacted twitter who simply deleted my account and gave it to them without contacting me. After contacting amazon as I would have gladly given them the bot, they informed me they didn't ask for it to be deleted but to contact me.

At the time twitter made some excuse about how it is against their TOS to give my email to another party (yet acceptable to delete with even contacting me)...

Seems like things haven't changed at le twit

Reading this new account's 15 tweets, it's clear that it is being run by someone who fancies themselves as a bit of a social media expert, but who is rather awful at it.

Ironicly, I can't see them ever getting nearly as many followers as the bot ever had.

The followup http://infovore.org/archives/2011/06/12/towerbridge-a-bit-mo...

I commented on the post but will post it here as well;

I had a similar thing with @apress a few years ago, I set up an automated twitter feed to post the daily book deal to a twitter account, a couple of months afterwards I checked and realized @apress was just given to Apress without any email or notice (everything I posted too was lost)

Fair play to apress I contacted them and they got back to me within half an hour, they had no idea twitter hadn’t contacted me they were just given the account and they apologised to me..

I very much doubt its the TB more likely to be the TB search, marketing or social media agency who want to control the brand rather than embrace and engage (ironic eh) infact I’d doubt that TB is fully aware of what has happened (until they get into the office on monday morning and see the hundreds of @ replies they've had)

The followup post was basically "ell, we should have had a conversation about it, rather than just yanking it". Certainly a decent claim. However, per the old @towerbridge name holder, twitter did contact him via email, and he'd just overlooked it.

I'm not in a position now to see what the old account info had on it, but I know there's been plenty of people I've wanted to reach out to for a number of reasons, and it's sometimes damned near impossible to get ahold of someone without doing it publicly. I can 'tweet' someone publicly, but can't DM if they don't follow me. I can publicly blog post, perhaps, but often there's no 'contact form' (or it may just get ignored as spam). Usually blogs or other info have no phone number or email on them. Facebook? Do I post "hey, please call me!" on your wall?

Ugh - the web's become entirely far too 'one way', and then we wonder why stuff like this happens? It's pretty damn hard to make a connection to someone without it being public, and not every conversation should be made in public.

Recovered some of them with google and a quick and dirty script. http://pastebin.mozilla.org/1248302

Well, it looks like he did get a notice.

New blog post: http://infovore.org/archives/2011/06/12/towerbridge-a-bit-mo...

http://support.twitter.com/articles/18311-the-twitter-rules

"Trademark: We reserve the right to reclaim user names on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those user names. Accounts using business names and/or logos to mislead others will be permanently suspended."

How they handled it might have sucked, but it was fairly clear what they would end up doing in situations like this.

Well, its Twitter. What were you expecting? You ride on their network for free, you can't be surprised when they opt to kick you off it without warning. Yes, the courtesy would be nice, but...

Set up a website.

I'm surprised Twitter hasn't tried to monetize this ala domain names. For handles that I want to keep, I (and no doubt many others) would fork over the cash to permanently secure it.

Why doesn't twitter just change the username to something ELSE instead of deleting/banning the account?

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One thing I think would help would be if Twitter would open up registrations to more than 15 letters.

Totally permissible under intellectual property law. The internet does not invalidate the concept of trademark.

Totally stupid from a customer service perspective, the on the part of both Twitter and the Tower Bridge.

I should probably look around for a new name then, I'm DanishBacon on twitter, which puts me in the danger area for being deleted outright and replaced by a bacon marketing scheme..

For those that care, Tower Bridge back online and tweeting at http://twitter.com/#!/twrbrdg_itself

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It turns out that Tower Bridge Exhibition (the org that now controls @towerbridge) don't even have a trademark on Tower Bridge.

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-text/

More proof that any data you share on a system that is not controlled by you is vulnerable to the interests of the system owner. Even worse when that data basically is part of your identity online.

And I'm not surprised it happened, either. Twitter seems to be slowly realizing that the way for them to make money is to work as an online "passport" of sorts - an identity service. As such, they have to head that direction. Sure, they need a better arbitration process. But as long as they can get away with just giving it to the more likely candidate, why spend the money?

pachube.com is a nice place to post this kind of data too. They have a nice api for this.

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Why are people still using Twitter? It's not exactly an elaborate service, and there are alternatives available...