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Miranda Bay by Susan Tarr | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's bookI was referring to Thunderclap as recently as last month, then I found out on Monday that they have been rejecting some author campaigns. Susan Tarr, author of Miranda Bay, tried to run a campaign on March 28th. Upon filling the forms and completing the process, she received the standard message:

Hey Susan Tarr,

Thanks for submitting MIRANDA BAY. We will review it within 3 days (Mon-Fri, 10-6 EST) and contact you when it’s approved.

If you’d like it approved within 24 hours, you can upgrade to any of our plans.

You can see a preview campaign page until it’s ready.

Have a question in the meantime? Check out our knowledge base.

Thank you!

However, the very next day she received the following rejection message (emphasis is my own):

Unfortunately, due to a change of rules with Twitter, we are no longer able to approve campaigns that are commercial in nature (anything related to a product or service).

This affects a large portion of campaigns on Thunderclap and because of this, we are developing a new product that would not have this limitation. If you would like to be on the waiting list, please fill out the short survey and we will when it is available.

Thunderclap waiting list | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's bookWhat’s Going On?

The Twitter changes the response Susan got seems to refer to Twitter’s new rules about spamming. Twitter no longer allows you to send 100 tweets at the same time, as Thunderclap does. The problem lies with the fact that a Thunderclap campaign only got out once you had the 100 supporters–and then it sent all tweets, posts etc at the same time. It appears that Thunderclap is now working on a workaround that will fix the problem, but in the meantime, an alternative service has already pulled ahead: DayCause.

DayCause

DayCause | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's bookDayCause has one advantage over Thunderclap–and it’s a big one: instead of waiting for the 100 supporters to line up, support goes out as it comes in. So, if you have 83 supporters instead of 100 and one hour to go, that’s no problem: you will still get 83 tweets and Facebook posts.

My guess is that Thunderclap will be back in business soon enough. I’m pretty sure they’re feeling the heat from DayCause, so they may change their policy to post and tweet as supporters come in. Or, they may tweet and post incrementally to work around Twitter’s restriction. Until they do, however, it’s good to know there’s an alternative that works just as well. Give it a try and, who knows? You may just conclude you like it better anyway.

Many thanks to Susan Tarr for the tip. Happy promoting!