Twitter, Melbourne IT order uSocial to be shut down

The chief executive of an Australian company that sells packages of Twitter followers to clients claims the social networking giant has attempted to shut him down.

Leon Hill says Twitter has used Melbourne IT, the Australian firm that manages the company’s domain names, to contact uSocial and demand it stop “spamming” the site.

“They’ve basically used Melbourne IT to send through to us all of these spam notices to both our hosting company and to us. Melbourne IT manages their domain names, so it’s all been done through them, not through Twitter directly.”

uSocial brands itself as “innovative advertising”, and offers businesses and individuals the opportunity to gain thousands of Twitter followers for a fee. It also sells votes for social news site Digg.com, allowing a client’s news story to be pushed to the front page, in front of millions of viewers.

While the company is looked down upon by a large number of Twitter users, it reportedly has some important clients, including the family of deceased pop star Michael Jackson.

But Melbourne IT has requested the site to stop operating, apparently citing rejections to uSocial’s use of “spam”. But Hill says uSocial is doing nothing wrong.

“I know that Twitter doesn’t like what we’re doing in regards to our Twitter services, but for all intents and purposes we don’t use Twitter as a platform for unsolicited messages. We’re simply doing things for other followers that they could do by themselves in their own time, so this reaction is a bit odd.”

Hill says he isn’t too worried about the objections, and says that if any action is taken against the site he will simply move it to another server.

“None of this worries me too much. I’ve tried to contact Twitter but haven’t heard back from them, but if anything does happen there’s nothing they can do to hurt me. If they do shut down the site, I can just move it to another host. If they take some legal action, I am more than willing to face them in court.”