Twitter has been implementing different policies about the number of follows you can maked vs followers you have.
It seems that there are a number of limits that Twitter employes to reduce load and fight off bots.
The basic limits are
- 1,000 updates per day
- 1,000 direct messages per day
- 100 API requests per hour
- Follow limit
So how does this effect you if you are an active Twitter user?
Well first is the Updates. If you get in a few heated discussions on a weekend you could go over the 1000 limit but for most users 1000 updates or posts to twitter should be enough.
Direct Messages are the ones that are private between you and your friend. You get an additional 1000 of those so you should use them.
100 API requests an hour. This is for people that use offsite software to access Twitter. If you are a developer you should apply for a Whitelisting of your application that way everyone can use it.
FOLLOW LIMITS
There has been a lot of talk about Ashton Kutcher being the first to reach the 1 million follower mark on twitter. Why is this? Most likely because twitter helps promote his account.
For the rest of us we often get followers by following someone else.
After all how will someone know to follow you if they can’t find you.
Twitter has a 2000 person follow limit but it is not applied equaly. You will often see people with higher followers that also follow back.
If someone follows you and you are near your limit you can’t reciprocate and follow them back unless you drop another person in your follow list.
Is this reasonable to apply changes unequily?
Well maybe yes if Twitter was in Beta Stage meaning it was not trying to deploy its full offerings but really this limitation has a lot more to do with the ability of their backend to support everyone following everyone else.
So what is Twitters Response now that they have implemented these changes?
“If you really need to follow someone and you’ve hit a limit, just go to your followers page and remove people”
HOWEVER people like AlohaArleen Following 70,761 Followers 69,906 are still allowed to follow as many people as they want.
This is basically unfair because Twitter is setting up some people as their base who Twitter uses to promote the use of their system.
They can do this all they want because it is their system and we are unpaying members but how long will the service last when someone else gets to select who is the popular person and who is not.
Now no one should have a problem with AlohaArleen she is an avtive poster who has been around for a long time but if Twitter cut her ability to follow back to 2,000 like the rest of us then she would be one of the millions not one of the select.
CNN FOX even stars like Alyssa Milano can get followers because people already know them but if you want to be popular on twitter it seems that you have to build your network away from Twitter and hope your followers don’t get ticked at you when you won’t do the socialy acceptable thing and follow back.
So should you clean out your followers and follows.
It seems like the only thing to do.
If you have accounts you are following that slipped in there with no updates then remove them. If you see people that you follow and they dont follow back then unfortunately you may have to choose to remove them.
Its a sad thing but you have to do it until Twitter gets its act together and starts allowing us to build follows.
Twitter should set a limit of 2000 follows and when you reach that you should have a proportional number of people following you maybe at least 50% or 1000 followers.
When you hit the limit you should then be allowed to follow more people at a rate of 50 a day at least. AND you should never have limits following people that are already following you.
Its just reasonable.
Twitter needs to grow at this or they will be replaced by another solution by a business that responds to user complaints.
If you want to know who you are following that is not following you try this site
