If you want to “Be Like Mike”, you’d better start tweeting profound observations about your everyday surroundings. Or not.

The latest and greatest account on Twitter is @__MichaelJordan (with two underscores) – an obvious parody, but side-splittingly funny nonetheless.
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UPDATE: The @michaeljordan account has now been suspended. Well done @Twitter – only took you about six months to notice.

Twitter has a strange, hot-and-cold policy to the suspension of what they refer to as ‘impersonator’ accounts, and which the rest of the world refers to as fakes.

You may recall the suspension of the Christopher Walken spoof account in March 2009. At the time, the profile was nearing 100,000 fans, which was a big deal a year ago, and was enormously popular, picking up a ton of retweets and mentions and also getting some attention in the mainstream press. However, the parody breached Twitter’s TOS regarding impersonation and was removed with no warning or fanfare, at least not from Twitter themselves.

That’s fine – that’s their rule, after all – but the problem is, much like anything else that falls under official Twitter policy, they seem to thrive on an attitude of ‘one rule for one’.

The (clearly) fake Michael Jordan account is a prime example. I mean, it’s a hoot, but it’s not real, and yet Twitter seems not to care about it one little bit.

Not only does that account have almost 75,000 followers, but it’s got the right username, too – @michaeljordan – and I can’t begin to imagine why Michael Jordan himself doesn’t do something about it. Or, for that matter, any of the many other representatives of the multi-billion dollar franchise that Jordan’s name represents.

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