It was a short and torrid love affair, but another social network has come to an end.

Today I received this message from Tipjoy:

Hello Tipjoy user,

As you probably now know, Tipjoy commenced shutting down operations in August 2009.  As of December 2009, the company has voluntarily elected to wind up its affairs and dissolve Tipjoy.  We are now in the final stages of winding down the company.

Our records indicate that you have a positive balance of $2.66 in your Tipjoy account.

Notwithstanding our the terms of Tipjoy’s’ Terms of Service that you agreed to upon opening your Tipjoy account, we are allowing you to reclaim the above amount from your Tipjoy account.  Due to certain timing and processing concerns and pressures, we must limit this offer to Friday, February 26, 2010.  This email is to notify you that you have until Friday, February 26, 2010 at midnight PST to visit http://tipjoy.com, sign in and cash out your funds.

After this deadline you will have forfeited these funds.

Thank you for your support of Tipjoy.
Best,
Abigail Kirigin
CEO, tipjoy.com

I think I’ll let them keep it.

So I’m into day 4 of my Twitter exile. Sometime late Sunday I was actually on the Twitter website, logged into my @johnnydiggz account and the website logged me out mid-session.

When I went to log in again it said “Wrong Username/email and password combination”

This struck me as odd because I hadn’t changed my password and my browser was set to auto-log me in. I retyped my username and password several times to no avail. So I tried the next step: Twitter’s password recovery tool.

I went to that page, filled out the form and got this message:

Ok, we’ve sent the instructions to your email. Go check it!
You can keep this page open while you check your email. If you don’t receive the instructions within a minute or two try Re-sending the instructions

The problem is I never received this email. So I waited a day and tried it again…no dice. I tried logging into ANOTHER Twitter account…worked just fine.

Then I noticed this post on PCWorld Twitter Password Resets Linked to Torrent Sites. Was my account somehow part of this reset? The timing seemed about right, but I don’t belong to any Torrent Sites. This made little sense, but it was all I had.

THEN I went to Twitter’s support page and saw this: Reason #4132 for Changing Your Password. Okay…so something’s going down with Passwords. I get it. Whatever. Can I have my Twitter account back now? Where’s my password reset email???

Now it’s DAY 4. I’ve tried resetting my password, I’ve tried contacting Twitter Support (there’s an oxymoron for ya!) to no avail. I did find this post Unable to receive password reset emails that seems to describe maybe what’s happening.

Finally…after many attempts, I finally got some support from Twitter, in the form of an email (see…I told you my email was working!). Here is what they had to say…after 3 days…

Hi JohnnyDiggz,

Thanks for contacting us about your login issue. We have received your message and will respond as soon as possible.

Thanks!
Twitter Support

—–

I really wish I could Tweet my frustration. Perhaps someone would listen. If you’re out there in Twitter Land, please RT this.

*** Update DAY 6 ***

I’m still locked out. No additional responses from Twitter Support. I enlisted the help my friend @JeffPulver to see if he can help and I’ve noticed a bunch of people have been retweeting this post and even started a hashtag #lockedout. Thanks for your help…especially @PurpleCar @pfmonaco @Jfavreau @JadoreAlmore @pfmonaco

@PurpleCar Know anyone who has been and is currently locked out of Twitter? Let’s start a hashtag, maybe Twitter will notice. http://is.gd/7NEeX #lockedout @johnnydiggz

*** Update DAY 7 ***

I’m back in! I just tried the password reset tool for the umpteenth time and this time I received an email! I’m back in Twitter. Still no word from Twitter Support.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over.

I’m trying a new feature called Tweet of the Week wherein I will repost my favorite Facebook status update or Tweet from one of my Friends each week.

Week 1 Winner:

Kiki Cortello has EXPLoSIvE DiarRHeA!!!!!!! sH*t!! I stuck a wine cork up my butt and just shot that cannonball in the porcelain seas!! HELP, how do I fix my cornhole??

There’s an increasing breakdown of the traditional social boundaries between workplace and homelife, and personal and public information.

Let’s say a Facebook user in England sues another user in Australia for defamatory comments posted on the site. Who has jurisdiction over the case, which country’s laws should be applied:  England’s, Australia’s or those of the United States, where Facebook is based?

Can the law keep up with technology? – CNN.com.

If you like making mixtapes, 8-Tracks might be for you. Put together a playlist and share it with your friends. For free.

I tried it out by putting together this mix (for the ladies).

Dear Pandora Radio,

I’ve been trying to “upgrade” my Pandora account, but every time I try to submit my credit card info it keeps giving me a message saying it is unable to store my credit card info:

1.  Why are you storing my credit card info anyway?   I realize you need it to process my 1-time $36 charge, but I UNCHECKED auto renew.  Please assure me this is not the case and if so, WHY ARE YOU STORING MY CREDIT CARD DATA?

2.  Every time I submit my credit card information, your website  won’t take it.  The error says “It’s my fault.”   Who is saying that?  Who’s fault is it?  Is it yours?  Who are you and why are you preventing me from upgrading my account?  Has your website become sentient?

Thank you,
Johnny Diggz

P.S.  A copy of this message is being posted to my blog at http://www.diggz.org.  I’ll be happy to post your response.  Hopefully it will be a considerate one and not some automated mumbo-jumbo.  Unless your website has actually become sentient, in which case, hello.  We come in peace. 

I wrote a post about this a while ago, and it’s been quite popular.  Facebook has recently changed things again and everyone’s in a tizzy about it.  Here’s some ways to get your Facebook news feed looking like it used to look:

OPTION 1:  Increase the number of Friends in your feed

The new default newsfeed on Facebook puts a heavy emphasis on what’s popular.   How does Facebook know what’s popular?  It counts comments and “likes” and puts those posts at the top of your feed.  Additionally, by default, it only puts 25o of your friends in your feed.   To change this, follow these steps:

1. Go to your HOME page. Make sure you are in “View Live Feed” mode.
2. Scroll all to the bottom of your screen, click “Edit Options.”
   
3. You will then see an option for “number of friends.” Change the 250 to 5000 for Facebook’s friend limit.

If you have a lot of friends, increasing this number to 5000 will greatly improve your default newsfeed.

OPTION 2:  Change your Default Feed to only show friends Status Updates

1. On the menu at the top left (right under the Facebook logo), click on MORE.
2. Find STATUS UPDATES and drag it to the top, above NEWS FEED.
3. After dragging it to the top, click on it. Now your default feed will only show status updates.  You can switch to the other modes just by clicking.

Enjoy!

Microsoft has reached collaboration agreements with Twitter and Facebook to get their members’ public status updates and messages indexed and presented in useful ways on the Bing search engine.

The partnership with Twitter has it working with Microsoft to optimize how Bing crawls and indexes “tweets.” Microsoft in turn will apply search algorithms to the Twitter messages, so that Bing users will not only be able to see a real-time feed of “tweets” but also rank them by how relevant they are to their query..

via Microsoft Strikes Search Deals With Twitter, Facebook – Business Center – PC World.

The Twitterverse is still recovering from the sudden departure of Courtney Love and her daughter.   Courtney Love has closed down her Twitter account just days after her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, went after Ali Lohan — Lindsay’s sister — on the micro-blogging service. Mother and daughter are both tweet-obsolete for the moment.

Love is dealing with a defamation claim after tweeting disgust at a fashion designer, and Demi Moore and Perez Hilton were also exploring legal action after their war of 140 characters or less with each other last month.

The law on what you can and can’t say on Twitter hasn’t been refined yet by a court, but assuming it follows the general defamation book, it’ll be hard to win a defamation lawsuit. But that won’t stop many plaintiffs from trying.

Tweet Delete: Celebs Exit Twitter – ABC News.