Twitter Follow Limits

My partners and I were talking the other day about Twitter and wondering what the follow limits were in their social network.  Since their support information is somewhat hard to find, I decided to post the rules here for those of you who might have wondered this yourself…

Why did I hit a limit?

Last year, Twitter imposed reasonable limits to help prevent system and user abuse.  (You can read more about that here.) If you hit a Twitter limit, we will tell you by showing an error message in your browser when you try to perform an action. If you’ve hit a limit, it means you’ve exceeded one of these limits:

• 1,000 updates per day

• 1,000 direct messages per day

• 100 API requests per hour

• Follow limit

We do not limit the number of people who can follow you, but we have put limits in place to stop people from aggressively following others.   Everyone is allowed to follow 2000 people.  After that, follow limits are based on the number of people who are following you.   Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter, and everyone is subject to follow limits, even high profile and API accounts

But I’m white listed!

Some API accounts have white list status so their applications can function without hitting system limits for direct messages, etc.  White listing means that you can have more API resources.  All white listed accounts are  still subject to follow limits.

If I hit a limit, what should I do?

* If you’ve reached a daily limit, wait 24 hours (or one hour for API requests) and you’ll be able to perform the action again.

* If your (legitimate!) app continually hits limits, apply to white list your app.  If you’re a company hitting limits while using Twitter for customer service, open a support ticket and let us know which limits you’re hitting. We’re always working on improving how these limits work, and are open to feedback.

* If you’ve reached a follow limit, you can help yourself by reducing your following number until it resembles your followers number. Since the follow limit is based on followers/following ratio rather than time, you’ll have to un-follow people before you’re able to follow again. Follow limits cannot be lifted by Support staff.

If I hit a follow limit, does it mean I’m considered a spammer?

No. Although aggressive following can be considered a spam tactic in some cases, Twitter does not use follow limiting to monitor spammers. Though follow limits do help with spam control, the limit itself improves site performance by ensuring that when we send a person’s message to all of their followers, the sending of that message is meaningful.  We believe that following 2000 people is a reasonable limit for the number of people an average person can follow.

Tips for avoiding follow limits

Twitter follow limits only kick in after unreciprocated follow attempts reach the thousands. Avoid hitting Twitter limits by not following aggressively– if others see that you’ve tried to follow 500 people but only 12 are following you, they may not follow you back, and worse, they might block you.

Twitter is an opt-in community– that is, you can follow who ever you want, but no one has to follow you back.  If you use aggressive following tactics, no one will want to.  If you feel you’ve hit a limit unfairly, or in error, please open a Support ticket and tell us what happened.  Please note: Support cannot remove follow limits.

But isn’t Twitter about social networking? Why limit who I network with?

Twitter may facilitate social networking, but we’re not specifically a social networking website.  In fact, the way Twitter works is quite different from social networks: when you accept friend requests on social networks, it usually means you appear in that person’s network and they appear in yours.

Following on Twitter is quite different, because instead of indicating a mutual relationship, following is a one way action that means you want to receive information, in the form of Twitter updates, from a person or entity.  Twitter allows people to opt in to (our out of) receiving a person’s updates without requiring mutual following.

If you have a public account, I can follow you but you don’t have to follow me.  Unlike most social networks, you follow me on Twitter NOT for the sake of a mutual connection, but because you want to get my updates, regardless of whether or not I get yours. If I want to read your updates too, I can– and unlike social networks,  if you change your mind and un-follow me, it doesn’t stop me from continuing to follow you.

If you follow too many people, there is no way you can keep up with everyone’s updates in your home page.  If you’re following more than 2000 people, you’re missing quite a few updates from many people you follow.  You can view a profile page to catch up with someone’s latest updates.

If you need to communicate with someone but don’t need to see their updates everyday, don’t follow them.  Send them an @reply when you need to; it doesn’t require following and your update will appear in the person’s replies tab, so they can reply back. If you really need to follow someone and you’ve hit a limit, just go to your followers page and remove people whose updates you don’t need to see everyday. (Hint: you’ll only see a direct message link for people currently following you.)

Twitter Support