Those of you who follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or GTalk probably know by now that Friday afternoon I lost all of my Twitter followers and everyone I was following. For those of you who didn’t know, let me fill you in:

Mid afternoon on Friday I noticed that I had gone tweetless for quite some time. Upon further investigation I discovered that my follower and following number were both set at 0; a scary realization for someone who had nearly 650 followers and was following over 800 tweeple. After navigating through the terrible, terrible, support system used by Twitter I finally figured out how to report my concern via commenting on the “known issue”. After my post and a number of other user posts Twitter admitted there was a problem and at 3:00 pm PST and advised users that they had a fix and it would be resolved today.

It is now 8:32pm PST and my account, and from what I can tell in the Twitter support thread, a number of other accounts are still without any followers and are unable to follow anyone. That’s over 72 hours without a resolve, which has left me crippled in terms of spreading blog posts, information, and interacting with fellow twitter users.

Earlier this morning I had a brief discussion with some of my fellow SEO Dojo members about the issue, and one member in particular, Justin Parks, made an interesting comment; “I don’t think anyone should complain, free is free after all.”. It got me thinking; in one hand he was right. I pay absolutely nothing to help keep Twitter afloat, what right do I have to complain that it has been nearly 72 hours and I’ve been without service. On the other hand, Twitter provides a service to the public. Free or not I feel it is in some way their obligation to try and support their customer base as much as possible; if not for the users alone, at least out of good business sense.

Since my post in the thread Friday afternoon at least 30 other twitter users have complained of the same problem I am experiencing, and no further updates regarding an ETA or status of the issue have been made by Twitter their post on Friday.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you think free services like Twitter have an obligation to support their customers better than they are currently, or is Justin correct in the sense that if we aren’t paying for it we should just deal? Let me know what you think in the poll below. I may be doing a follow up post once service is restored and I’ll use the data collected.

I’ve talked a lot in the past about the future of the music industry, it’s marketing, and the bands that are already performing ahead of the curve.  With the RIAA and record labels in a constant panic about the decline in CD sales each year and the millions of illegal downloads that happen each year they have been forced to try new techniques to drive record sales.  Various labels and bands are coming up with new ways all the time, but one of the more up and coming methods is the tiered pricing method.  Offered by Nine Inch Nails, and perhaps more popularly by Josh Freese in his outrageous attempt to promote his album ‘Since 1972’, the tiered pricing structure hasn’t really hit the mainstream audience so much as industry veterans and independent artists.

However, Summit Entertainment and Chop Shop/Atlantic Records are about to change that with their announcement regarding tiered pricing for the pre-order of the highly anticipated New Moon Soundtrack.  The soundtrack to the sequel of last years fall blockbuster Twilight has been gaining hype and speculation since before the film was even in production.  Twilight, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 sold 165,000 copies in its first week.  If that weren’t enough Twilight went on to be the soundtrack with the most paid downloads in digital history, with 412,000 downloads, putting it at number two on Nielsen SoundScan’s list of the 100 best-selling digital albums of all-time.  All this done without any special promotions or hype to drive sales, which leads me to believe that both Summit and Chop Shop/Atlantic are anticipating another successful soundtrack with some substantial profits made from this tiered format.

The four tier structure offers something for everyone and starts as low as $9.99 and caps at $499.99.

Digital – The Digital package is being offered for $9.99 and gives purchasers a digital MP3 download of the album 72 hours before its release on October 20th as well as a MP3 download of the single Meet The Equinox by Death Cab for Cutie on September 13th.

Standard – For $16.99 buyers receive the New Moon Soundtrack CD on October 20th.  An MP3 download of the single Equinox by Death Cab for Cutie on September 13th, a weekly e-mail subscription to “Twi-Insiders” with exclusive New Moon information including artist confirmations, clips of music, artist interviews, lyrics and more, and a New Moon sticker sheet.

Deluxe – For $34.99 the Deluxe package offers everything listed in the first two packages as well as a New Moon poster.

Limited Edition – The Limited Edition package offers 50 Twilight fans everything listed above as well as a limited edition Death Cab for Cutie t-shirt and a personalized Twilight Soundtrack Commemorative Plaque for having sold over 2 million copies.  The kicker?  This one is selling at $499.99

While the tiered structure seems to have worked well for bands like Nine Inch Nails, I am left to wonder how well something like this will do for a soundtrack from a film marketed mostly at teens.  I would imagine the bulk of pre-order sales will come from the Digital and Standard packages while a few of the more seasoned Twi-hards will actually fork out the cash for the Deluxe and Limited Editions.  My guess is that if any of the Limited Edition packages are purchased in this economy the bulk of them will be sold to spoiled little rich girls who aren’t getting pony’s for Christmas or uber geeks that live in their parents’ basement.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing but love for uber geeks, but c’mon use that $499 to get out of your parents basement instead of buying a plaque for an accomplishment you had nothing to do with.

All in all I like that record labels are trying things like this.  Offering digital and CD copies of the music with a few extra perks makes me a bit more willing to spend the cash to go out and purchase an album.  Paying $16 bucks for a jewel case, a pretty liner and a CD just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.  Hell paying that much for a digital download of an album doesn’t even seem worth it anymore.  So this is a nice change of pace.  I do think that in a lot of instances though the labels still don’t quite get what it is that the fans really want.  Sure the plaque is nice, but is that something fans of these films and their soundtracks really wants?  I bet you if you dropped in a Rob Pattinson signed copy of the Twilight Soundtrack or a similar perk you’d probably easily make more sales. But what do I know?  I’m just a search marketer and blogger…