Twitter has changed many of their limits over time. I bet you don’t know about all the changes shown below in red.
Special thanks to Julie Weishaar at NewHorizons123.com for turning my Twitter Best Practices post into the
SlideShare above. If you want your content turned into a SlideShare or video, contact Julie here.
There is also a rumor reported in many places that Twitter may eliminate the 140 character tweet length limit and allow basically blog posts of up to 10,000 characters. If they do, only the first 140 are likely to be shown in our Twitter streams with a “read more” link. The probably reason for this is that they want to keep people on Twitter and not have us sending their users off to read our posts.
It isn’t obvious to most Twitter users that there are seven eight types of Twitter limits that affect regular Twitter users that I have identified so far.
TWITTER LIMITS:
2,000Now 5,000 Twitter Followers Limit: You can’t follow more than 5,000 until almost 5,000 follow you. This is the toughest limit to deal with so if you notice someone is at 5,000 don’t unfollow them for not following you back (because they can’t) and consider tweeting a #followfriday recommendation for them so they can get past that limit. When you hit this limit you will see the message: ” You are unable to follow more people. Please read about our following limits. ” SOLUTION: You have to unfollow non-followers in order to follow anyone else. A Twitter App like JustUnfollow as I explained in this strategy for Growing Twitter Followers.- Twitter Followers to Following Percentage Limit: You can only follow about 10% more people than follow you. According to Twitter: “this limit is different for every user and is based on your ratio of followers to following.” When you hit this limit, we’ll tell you by showing an error message in your browser. You’ll need to wait until you have more followers in order to follow more users—basically, you can’t follow 10,000 people if only 100 people follow you.” SOLUTION: Same as for limit #1 just above.
- Following (daily): 1000 – Joe from Internet Marketing for Local Business believes (and I agree) that there are what he called “velocity limits”…in other words just as the tweets per day are split up by hour so is following. While you can follow 1000 per day you can’t follow them too quickly or you’ll hit a limit that may lock down your account for up to 24 hours. I believe it is safer to follow during off hours instead of during prime U.S. business hours if you don’t want to hit that limit. You wouldn’t want to be unable to tweet something important because you did. [NOTE: especially in newer accounts, following too many can get your account suspended. Information about how to recover your Twitter account here.]
- Tweets Per Day: Originally
1000, but now 2400 tweets per day - Tweets Per Hour (or semi-hourly interval?): I have not found a specific number; however, one could theorize this would be approximately
1000NOW 2400 divided by 24 hours = about41NOW ~100 tweets per hour. (They have to be spread across the entire hour – not all sent in 15 minutes.) See How Many Tweets Can You Post Per Day for more details. - Direct Messages: Originally
250per day, but now 1000 per day; originally limited DMs to140characters; now up to 10,000 characters. - Changes to Account Email: 4 per hour
- Twitter Lists: You can now make up to 1,000 lists (up from
20), and each list can include up to 5,000 accounts (up from500). - Unfollowing Limit? While some speculate that there is an unfollowing limit, and Twitter has forced unfollowing tools to remove the option to bulk unfollow, in my account I have unfollowed thousands in one night (one at a time). Remember that my account is very well established, so there may be unfollowing limits on new or smaller accounts.
Brian D. Hawkins from HotBlogTips home of some of the very best blogging tips shared this important bit of advice:
Even though we stay well below the radar when it comes
to Twitter limits, there’s always the risk of being
squashed if we’re not careful.
He commented that Website Magazine just had a very informative article on how to keep from being banned by Twitter as they go through this huge review process. A lot of decent people are loosing their accounts everyday by doing what most of us might consider business as usual. Read their Ban This! New Rules for Twitter Users for more details.
If you ever hear of anyone having their account banned get the word out. Maybe if we rally to the defense of someone who has a quality Twitter account they will reconsider and unban them.
NOTE: Twitter usernames are still limited to 15 characters.
If this cartoon applies to you (or even if it doesn’t), you’ll want to keep this link for reference.
Official Twitter Pages About Twitter Limits:
- Twitter Following Rules and Best Practices
- What Twitter Says About Limits (Update, API, DM, and Following)
- I Can’t Follow People – Twitter Follow Limits
- Following Rules and Best Practices
- The Twitter Rules
Be sure to check out my Twitter Best Practices page
Contains this post and everything from getting started on Twitter
To advanced Twitter Strategies for Businesses and Bloggers
Gail Gardner
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Thank you for sharing this article. It’s good to know about all these limits that Twitter is implementing. Although you can’t really determine the exact figures but I think you made a great job by providing the approximate figures, which is still accurate. Thank you for sharing this, I now have guidelines for posting on Twitter.
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You’ve reached…50 tw received… Sometimes I read this 2 a day. In all those years of using Twiter, I never do something against the rules, never sale or… something. Why this is good and how can I get rid of it pls?
Hi Iztok,
I have never seen the message you’re talking about so I’d have to see a screen capture or at least the complete message to find out.
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Twitter itself says the limit is for a semi- hour. And I just reached it with retweets which count in there as well.
( I achieved this on an account I use just for voting, in case you wonder ^^)
And because no-one seems to know I just took the time and counted. 😉
I counted 300 tweets/retweets.
I think it makes sense that it is not 2400 devided by 24 (or even 48 because of the semi hour) because then they wouldn’t have had to make a second limit for the daily tweets. That would have been included then already, right?
Hi Steffi,
Yes, the limit is not cleanly divided into 24 hours. And, yes, Twitter limits how many tweets / retweets you can send.
But I suspect the limit Iztok is complaining about is because he is using Twitter on a cellphone and the limit is from the cellphone carrier rather than from Twitter.
For example: Why Does Verizon Have a 50 Twitter Message Limit for Verizon Message App?.
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Good Information posting, I do not know about the twitter limits now I read this article.Thanks for a share valuable topic on twitter this is useful info for not only me and all the twitter users.
Thanks for providing this highly informative update Gail!
For me it’s both pro & con. Because even though these changes to
twitter, definitely help make it an even more effective, inexpensive marketing tool.
It also means it’s even more work for me to stay update with these ever changing trends.LOL!
I readily admit, I’m not the most pro-active, when it comes to effectively using social media
in general and twitter in particular!
Thanks for the update!
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I was just put on a 12 hour hold where only my followers could see my tweets. Makes no sense to me, all I tweet are links from news articles about Trump, I do tag him in them. Was I punished for tagging the pres?
Great article, very helpful. What’s the safe mark for “follow velocity” that you mentioned? I tried following people today (with an account with 27k followers I’ve used for about 10 months now) and my account got locked. I had to reset my password via phone unlock code.
If I keep doing this and keep getting locked, it may suspend my account. I used to do mass following, but haven’t for months now. Today was the first time in a while, so I just discovered these rules.
What do you think is a safe follow velocity? Maybe 1 follow ever 10 seconds? Shorter, longer?
Thanks!
Josh
Hi Josh,
It isn’t consistent. On a new account people slowly follow only about 10 a day. Start slow and then work up. On my @GrowMap account, I can follow 1000 a day and they don’t complain.
I’m not sure how that works exactly, but maybe it knows I’m super active. Most likely there are algorithms that decide what is ok for each account based on their activity level.
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Thanks for sharing the limits. My followers stay well above the number of people I am following, so those limits shouldn’t likely come into play. I cannot comprehend anyone needing to send out a new tweet more than every 36 seconds, which is what 100 tweets per hour comes down to.
I think knowing the limits is good for new people to Twitter. The limits help them to understand how not to abuse the platform and likely lose followers over it.
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Hi Ben,
Thank you for taking the time to comment. The limits most affect people who are actively growing their accounts and following about 2000 people. When news is breaking, if you were to retweet too many related tweets too quickly you might hit the tweeting limit. I don’t think you need to send 100 tweets in an hour – just too many too close together. It is easy to retweet many in 36 seconds.
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I have noticed that Twitter is not giving our account @Power2Bernie the correct number of followers we should have way more than what they have tallied. Any suggestion? I took screenshots over a course of time when I realized there was something in question here. Have similar issues with FB too
Hi Abbey,
Twitter periodically cleans out fake accounts, so if you had fake followers those will be suspended now. All social networks manipulate social proof and censor us, so it is also possible that if they don’t like your politics that will affect your accounts, followers, and what you share.
Also remember that if your account goes dormant (does not post for 30 days), expert Twitter users will unfollow you. And if you don’t follow people back, many serious Twitter users will unfollow you. So make sure your account is consistently posting at least once in every month or you will lose followers that way.
Sharing anything others don’t like can also prompt them to unfollow you. If you want to know exactly what is going on, you would have to contact people who were following you and are not now and ask them if they unfollowed you and why (assuming they can remember or have a tool that will tell them).
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Thanks for sharing so much hanks for sharing the details on the twitter. Although I often use twitter but the information here is quite useful and interesting as well.
Had no idea these limits have changed, Gail – and now I know! 😉 (will need to edit a few posts to reflect the changes…. ever-growing to-do list!)
Hi Ana,
I know, right? I saw that one changed, and decided to update this post and came across the others. There is no way we can ever keep on top of everything. Did you check out the custom SlideShare in this post? I started it on the Twitter Limits slide, but it is actually a comprehensive SlideShare Julie Weishaar at NewHorizons123.com created for my Twitter Best Practices post.
Since that one, she created one for a post I did for AllBusiness.com on The Truth About How Freelancers Make Money While Sleeping highlighting How Mom Blog Drove 628,780 Page Views From Social [in January 2016].
It has 6,259 views on it – most of them in the first 10 days. That post got featured on the AllBusiness home page and also sent out in their newsletter as their “Featured Post of the Week”.
Julie does great work with almost no guidance. She just looks at the post, pulls out the highlights, shows me the draft and then we go through it together on Skype screensharing, making small changes and additions until it is just right.
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I did look at her SlideShare presentations, Gail.
She does a great job, but personally, I prefer fewer words, but great imagery, with a side of humor. 😉 Kind of like I did this one: http://www.slideshare.net/MeetAna/how-to-manage-twitter-7-experts-reveal-their-daily-twitter-routine
Hi Ana,
I’m sure she’d be happy to use fewer words. I don’t mind wordiness as I’m kind of that way myself. 🙂 I’ll go check out yours and give it a like and share.
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Hi Nicole,
I’m glad you found your way to this post. It isn’t always easy to find out about these limits – until you hit them and are trying to figure out what is going on. Over the years, I’ve researched each one as I hit it and compiled them all here.
Do check out my Twitter Best Practices post, too. It has a huge collection of tips and strategies.
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Hii….Nice article…actually i am new in twitter so i want to know that how can i increase my twitter followers apart from this article is really very informative…Thank you for posting this…
Hi Shalu,
Read the Twitter Best Practices post.
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Great and amazing post, I’m a Twitter marketer and this will help me a lot, I didn’t know so many facts about Twitter.
The slide you have shared is very helpful to know the details of the Twitter limits thing. Thanks for sharing.
Nice article i want to know how to engage people by my twitted can you explain me or email me.Thank awaiting for your answer.
Hi Stella,
Read the post I put in CommentLuv in this reply.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Twitter Best Practices: How to Use Twitter Effectively ~ Make Twitter Work for YOU
Hi Alice,
Twitter has always had limits and it has also always had spammers. They periodically delete fake accounts causing real Twitter users to wonder why they lost followers.
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I didn’t knew about all these twitter limitations. Thanks for sharing this information with us.
This information is much helpful for me.
I am using twitter but not heavily, mostly im using facebook, but I am reading a lot how twitter is good for business, I will keep this limit in mind, when I started learning more about twitter.
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Twitter can take a such action because of fake accounts. On twitter there are lots of fake accounts. I think it’s better option twitter can choose.
I personal like small character size per tweet, but definitely looking forward to see how the twitter evolve in the future. Thanks for sharing this vital info
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It is good to have such limitations as it will help Twitter to weed out all the spamming accounts. Thanks for the great article, Gardner.
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Hi,
Well, not really. There are still a ton of fake accounts and the people who create them are way better at getting around the limits than the average user. The best way to reduce the spam you see is to be picky who you follow.
One spammer trick is to create lists with excellent users on them, and then throw in a bunch of fake accounts hoping they’ll get follows, too. If you’re paying attention, they are pretty obvious so that doesn’t really work – at least not on experienced Twitter users.
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Once when me and another user were talking and using Twitter like a chat room, just random back and forth talking with each other and, we hit a limit that said we had reached the hourly posting limit of 200 posts per hour.
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Hi Wendy,
Everything I’ve read says 2400 tweets a day which would be 100 tweets per hour rather than 200.
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Thanks for sharing this article and nice explanation…these are very valuable points, I remember these points.when i use the twitter definitely I will follow these things
We are planning to build a web app using which users would be able to send messages/tweet to people/users they intend. We can access the twitter api but its restricted to only few requests per hour and per day. So, we most likely need a solution that does not have any restrictions!
Twitter hourly & daily follow limit are not good. I hope they ditch this and soon. Follow me I will follow back!
Hi Joseph,
I wouldn’t hold my breath – more likely they will impose tighter limits – not weaker. Check out the Twitter Best Practices post I mentioned.
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Hi Joseph,
I was wrong. They did increase the limits, but then they removed share counts which is a terrible mistake that has already reduced traffic from Twitter to blogs and usage on Twitter.
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Surely if I want to follow 3000 people I should be able to? Simply following others doesn’t mean you’re going to get followed back, so why discourage it?
Hi James,
You can follow more than 3000 people but you have to get a certain percentage to follow you before you can follow more. THAT is the reason people like me have to unfollow those who don’t eventually follow them – because otherwise we can’t follow new followers back.
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I understand the rules about tweets per day or hour, but I don’t really get the ones about number of followers. Why would that be limited?
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Hi Ana,
The follower limits are Twitter’s attempt to prevent spam, but it doesn’t work. They just keep opening more and more accounts while real users have to unfollow non-followers in order to follow new followers.
I hate the new look of twitter now their are some instance when I follow some people the pages starts to refresh itself and all the people I’ve followed from the top to bottom are back again to un-follow.
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Hi Y8,
If you hate the old “new” look wait until you see the latest “new” look. I have a client who already has it and it is way worse than the one you commented about!
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I didn’t knew about the first two limitations and I can’t even guess the reason for it.
The rest are likely to regulate spamming. But most important entity is a common user and the authorities must see that these restrictions do not hurt them.
I guess the tweets per-day and per-hour limit is just an ideal way to make twitter more spam-free. Cause if you think about it 41 tweets per-hr, you can still tweet every 2mins,if my calculations are right though, and a normal person can’t really tweet faster that he can type and think what he’s going to tweet about. So i really don’t find this limit as a limit at all. The only not so good thing is the 2,000 Twitter Followers Limit, you just wanna follow more people and there’s nothing bad having the opportunity to know more things in this world. I just can’t find a good reason why they need to have this 2,000 Twitter Followers Limit, Thanks for the information lad. Now i know that i should choose and priorities the people the i need to follow before i reach the limit.
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I agree with you that it is just ideal to have tweets per-day and per-hour limit because, simple, a real person cannot post 1000 tweets per day. Only spammers do that.
I type 91 words a minute (5,400 words an hour); 311 words = average of 1,800 characters;
1,800/ 140 = average 12 words per tweet
5,400 words / 12 = I can type 450 tweets per hour
I use twitter like a chat room and I hit the 200 tweets per hour limit 3 or 4 times a day
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Hi Wendy,
I use Twitter a lot, too, but I’m not hitting that limit as much as you are because we use it differently. Hitting that limit several times a day would definitely be very annoying!
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These are interesting but very useful to know. I knew of these limit, but wasn’t sure on the exact number. However, these limits are fair if your a human. I think these are created to limit ‘bot’ work.
Thank you for sharing this valuable information. This article has helped me to realise the limits of twitter account which i am not aware of earlier. I am currently following 1000 people with just 300 followers. Can you please tell me how to improve the authority of my twitter account as i am now followed by quite a few spammers.
Thank you for sharing this valuable information. I am currently following 1000 people with just 300 followers and this article has definitely helped me to understand the limits of twitter. I should aim to spread the love and get more followers instead of following others. Can you please tell me how to improve the authority of my twitter account as i am now followed by half of spammers.
Very good information on twitter and I tweet regularly but not even near to 10 a day. Thanks for sharing this useful post.
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Thanks for sharing the details on the twitter. Although I often use twitter but the information here is quite useful and interesting as well.
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1,000 tweets per day?? Seems pretty generous, no? I would unfollow anyone who tweeted more than, say, 50 times a day.
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I’m not a casual twitter user so reading this post gives me more knowledge how the community works. I really like the idea of the follow/follower limit, makes a lot of sense in networking. Thanks!
wow..i just loved it thanks…nice post..
[Hi Christina. Most bloggers will delete short comments that just say “nice post”. When you comment you need to say something specific about the post so they can tell you’re not a spammer. Also, please use KeywordLuv for your links. See How to Use KeywordLuv for details.]
well i’m aware of these twittings but the thing is this its a lot of time taking. who is welling to spend this much to for this. anyways nice article i liked it.
cheers
Twitter limits direct messages to 250 total per day on all devices (Web, cell phone, etc.). As an alternative to Twitter direct messages, the sponsor can always ask people to send messages to his personal email account.
Wow. I was aware of the 2000 follower limit, but wasn’t about the other.
Is this a way to control spam or just to control how many resources they need to have to throw at their servcie?
I always try to be smart when it comes to following people to rapidly or using any software programs or websites that help gain massive amount of followers.
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I have found a very useful information here and I didn’t know that there are limitation in twitter.
I can’t imagine anyone other than a company’s support department ever needs to tweet more than 1000 times/day or 250 DMs per day. Pretty sure people would start unfollowing me if I tweeted more than 100 times a day, much less 1000! But it’s good to know the limits, nevertheless, so thanks!
I really dint knew that we can use twitter so usefully and wonderfully with so many features, I feel this is something really interesting and tips that will be helpful to every one who read this article.
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Hi,
Great list, I ran into the first one too but really put out some good tweets and you are over the hump. I actually too agree with the tweets per day, common 1000 tweets, it should be limited to 100 or 250 max right? Anyone tweeting more is just spamming, right?
Nik
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easily understand value of twitter
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I Just loved the article it really gives a brilliant Idea of how to make use of twitter . I feel this is brilliant way learn more about twitter and help those who are interested in building their following network well. I really want to learn more and implement this for my network. I guess with the help on SMM will also increase the opportunity to have more following.
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It was a matter of time before limits were set for twitter. It is just like any other popular medium. I didn’t know about half of these, so thanks for the info!
It’s been a long time to use Twitter but happy to know about its limits.
To be honest with you, i use Twitter almost exclusively for my business. But i didn’t know any of these limitations. Thanks
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We are all guilty as charged in one way or another when it comes to Twitter abuse. But who can you blame? Twitter is just an enticing portal where people always think that what they tweet are always being seen by many. Thanks for sharing this wonderful article.
These are good rules though, right? I mean, can you imagine anyone sending out 1000 tweets in a day? I’d shoot them! And then I’d unfollow them. 🙂
Those are some crazy figures. To send out a 1000 tweets or 250 PMs a day seems almost impossible, unless you use intravenous caffeine and type really fast. WOW!
Thanks for sharing though!
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Hi Ana,
I’m sure most of the time people would hit those limits it would be because they’re using automation, but I did once see the “too many tweets in an hour” because I was tweeting and RTing info and hashtags about Hurricane Irene.
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Also 140 characters limit in tweets in annoying. But, it harder for a tweeter team to deals with spams. So, the limitations are worth for them.
Thanks for a great post, i learn a lot from your site! cheers!
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Well, I guess they have to stay one step ahead of the spammers – clearly the system was being abused which is no good for any twitter user, as spam grows, users will simply migrate to the next platform.
Good Grief a 1,000 tweets, blimey, what the heck would people be tweeting about! Or should I say spamming about with that many going out 😉
It’s great to find out what we are limited to on Twitter, sometimes Twitter can be so mysterious when it comes to things like this 😉
wow i didnt know that!! i wonder who tried all these 7 things to see how much the limit it and counted each one 🙂
Hi Haram,
Some we come across using Twitter and others Twitter has published.
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Hi Gail, Even tough we stay well below the radar when it come’s to Twitter limits, there’s always the risk of being squashed if not careful. Website magazine just had a very informative article on how to keep from being banned by Twitter as they go through this huge review process. A lot of decent people are loosing their accounts everyday by doing what most of us might consider business as usual. I know you like links so I hope it’s alright to link to the article, it’s pretty interesting: Ban This! New Rules for Twitter Users
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Hi Brian,
Like many other things in life, Twitter has all the power and we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Some of their guidelines say they’ll ban us for spamming for following too many and another says they can ban us for spamming if too many more follow us than we follow.
Bottom line is that they can always ban anyone and anything we do might get us into hot water. The one consolation is that MAYBE if enough Twitter users object to a quality account disappear we can get them to reconsider.
It is ALWAYS more than alright to add related links in the comments here. I encourage it and if you have a bunch of them in one comment it might go to moderation but I’ll find it and approve it.
I also often move the links up into the body of the post and give attribution and a link to those who took the time to share.
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Interesting find. Informative, didn’t know all this. Thanks for sharing.
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Despite the ‘sky is falling’ advise about the economy, please keep in mind the amount of traffic generated by surplus activity remains the driving boost that takes care of the e-commerce bottom line. There is plenty for everybody! Readily making multiple ways to negotiate from entry level to advanced. I find it relieving that portable offices and exotic lifestyles are main contributors for our successes letting us ‘tweet’ like we mean it.
Hi Ginger,
I write my Truth because the major media is not going to tell us what is REALLY going on and most people don’t realize until it is too late. At least if they read about the possibility they will start paying attention to the signs all around them of underemployment, unemployment, foreclosures and closing businesses.
Yes, there IS plenty for everyone IF we stop helping the few mega-wealthy take more than their fair share away from those who are going hungry. For those interested, the post I’ve put in CommentLuv in this reply has more information on what is REALLY happening.
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I’ve never tweeted 1000 times a day nor would I want to but I wasn’t aware of some of the other limits.
There’s now also a limit of how many status updates you can receive by SMS. It’s currently 200 daily and reset times vary. I only found out about it recently.
All I can say is WOW! Two thumbs up to the makers of Twitter.
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Very helpful. I did not know about ALL the limitations… Thanks for sharing.
Hi Gail, I can’t imagine what it looks like to send out 1,000 tweets in one day. But I’m sure someone out there has tried before! Thanks for sharing these limits with us. I’ll share this on Blog Engage.
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Hi Ileane,
I suspect that only spammers ever send 1,000 tweets, but I did hit the hourly limit for the first time the other night when I was tweeting out hashtags, resources and tips for those affected by Hurricane Irene.
The first two limits are the ones that most serious Twitter users are eventually going to have to deal with so I wanted to share the solutions here.
As always, thank you for sharing my content on Blog Engage and elsewhere. I sincerely appreciate what you do.
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I’ve found some evidence that there are velocity limits in place too. I can’t confirm this exactly but I had my account suspended twice for following too many people too fast. I’m not sure if this is over a period of a day or multiple days.
I wasn’t at the 1000 person per day threshold that you are suggesting exists.
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Hi Joe,
You could be correct. Social networks often have limits they don’t publicize and I am pretty sure all the information now available at the links I provided in this post did not always contain the information they do now – or even exist two or three years ago.
I do know that one blogger I know hit a limit that sounds like what you are describing when she was following people during business hours. Since Twitter admits that the 1000 tweets per day limit creates a tweets per hour limit it makes sense that the followers per day limit would also.
I have never run into limits following people while she ran into it the very first time she did what I was doing. The only difference was I do that during off hours and she did it during business hours. So I’m going to theorize that during peak busy periods (probably business hours in U.S. time zones) there are tighter limits than during off hours.
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This was very interesting to read. i had no idea twitter had limits like this, i knew Facebook had their 5000 friend limit but this is naturally a different matter. I suspects its made like this so people wont buy and sell twitter accounts, but what do i know. Thanks for keeping me in the loop!
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LOL the bird look so pity. I do not put much emphasis on its limitations, the only thing I knew is tweet and tweet.
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Sounds all too restrictive to me. I prefer sites that are easier to work with.
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never knew about the 2000 followers limit. if i want to follow all the sports stars i want, then i need to look for the followers of mine! )
Twitter has been a part of me for like how many years, but I just found out about this limits for tweeter. Thanks for sharing, so far I have not exceeded the limit yet and still enjoying twitter business and personal matters.
I find this rules great, if you ask me they are pretty indulgent even now. Nobody tweets 1000 times a day or follows 1000 people in one day unless the are looking to build a spam account. Same with the 2000 following limit. None one can actually follow that many people and pay attention to each tweet they post.
Hi Cristian,
While I agree that tweeting 1000 times in one day would be highly unusual for anyone besides a spammer, there are reasons to grow a Twitter account beyond 2000 people and Twitter Lists and Twitter searches that allow you to focus on the tweets you want to see.
No one pays attention to every tweet in their timeline unless they’re only following a handful of people. How could they? It is impossible.
If you wish to create a better world you need to be able to reach many people of like mind. The more people you can reach, the faster we can improve our standard of living and assist those in need.
The economy is going to get MUCH WORSE and there will be so many in need that the more bloggers can expand their reach NOW the more able we will be to help those who don’t know how to get help.
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Perhaps, but the bulk of accounts I’ve seen following significantly more than their follower count are hoping for auto-follow backs. So I appreciate these limits. There are several tools you can use to glean all the info you want, so rarely would anyone have a viable excuse for following that many people.
One could argue some of those accounts are information gathering, but, again, there are other ways to do that. Sounds like Twitter is trying to remind us that the network is for sharing and interacting.
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Hi Pamela,
I respect those who choose to see Twitter in different ways. I agree that twitter is for sharing and interacting. The question is how much reach to do how much good is each Twitter user interested in.
The primary reason for following many is so many will follow you – because the more people who follow you the more people will read what you share. It is as simple as that.
When @TonyRobbins RTs my tweets they go viral because he has almost two million followers. If he only had 200 or 2,000 or even 20,000 that wouldn’t happen. (There are screen captures and stats about that in my GrowMap Third Birthday post.)
I am opposed to the idea that some are famous and can treat everyone else like their buckle bunnies so I recommend following most of the people who follow us and using Twitter lists and Twitter search so we can hone in on the section of our timeline we want to see at any given time.
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I do understand why many follow back. My issue is those who follow people SOLELY to get followers. The bulk who do this to me have nothing interesting to say to me, and certainly don’t interact with my posts. In fact, most of them unfollow me if I haven’t followed them within a certain timeframe. That, to me, is a waste of time and bandwidth.
Comparing the average Joe to Tony Robbins really isn’t that good of an analogy, right?
Also, never underestimate the average Joe. An average Joe with 200 followers who really engage can be very rewarding themselves. The bulk of things that go viral do so because of “average Joe” interest. I’ve watched many celebs and while their tweets might get more activity, on average it stops at the first RT in the pyramid.
I’m not sure how the “buckle bunnies” scenario fits in with my initial comments…
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I agree with your comments, save for the thing about the buckle bunnies. I don’t auto-follow, and I don’t feel snobbish about it. I like using the Feed to read tweets – I find having to keep track of everything in lists more tedious. Reading via lists only can get nerve-racking, especially on mobile devices. I know there are services/apps that simplify this process, but I want to use the services/apps I want to use. 🙂
Simply put, if you’ve got something interesting to say, I’ll follow you. There’s a great deal of argument about this, but for me, it falls under my “work smarter, not harder”.
In short, while I don’t auto-follow, I read tweets from everyone I do follow. Thus, @growmap has my attention whenever I’m on – not just when I search or view a list.
Just my two cents.
Pamela Hazelton would love you to read ..Why I’ll Keep Using webOS
Hi Pamela,
I follow many and encourage other bloggers like me to do the same, but we only follow those who are in our niche and interested in the same things we are. There definitely are too many people who just follow anyone they hope will follow them back. That is pretty pointless.
It is quite possible for social media savvy bloggers to eventually end up with as many followers as someone like Tony Robbins who had already built a following before Twitter came on the scene. I know many bloggers who have 20,000 / 30,000 / 40,000 or even more followers already and their numbers are growing every day.
When you focus on interacting with people interested in what you have to say and grow a large following that includes other influencers that is where the most activity will occur. We know this to be true based on what gets RTed and also because studies such as the Cornell University / Yahoo! Research Twitter Study singled out influential bloggers I know personally.
Many who follow famous people are RTing because the famous person tweeted it but since they are often purely followers they are rarely influential.
The ‘buckle bunnies’ reference is defined in the link I offered in my reply that goes to a page explaining why I believe in following back and not acting like a celebrity who thinks everyone should follow me but I don’t need to follow them. If they don’t want to interact with me why would I want to follow them?
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I am so glad that i visit this blog, i didn’t know that there are limitations in twitter especially in followers and following. Thanks for posting i have found a very useful information
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Love the cartoon! Although I knew there were limits, wasn’t so clear on all of them until I read this, thanks!
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Interesting.
The daily follower listing is something that I have bumped up against in the past. the rest of them are new to me. I must say, though that all of them seem pretty reasonable.
I am pretty sure i would not want someone on my twitter list who did more than 1000 tweets in a day. Or 250 DMs.
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Hi Steve,
Your experience is typical for a blogger. We can hit the daily follower limit pretty easily using some of the strategies in my Twitter Best Practices tips.
I noticed when I was researching this post that we are all guilty by Twitter’s standards because – as in so many ‘rules’ people create we are “damned if we do and damned if we don’t”.
For example, some rules say we should not be trying to build large followings because that means we’re a spammer and another says if we have lots of followers but follow few we’re a spammer.
The bottom line is if Twitter so desires we’re toast. We can hope, though, that if we are using Twitter for good and our followers like what we are doing that we are unlikely to be banned and – if that were to happen – people appealing on our behalf MIGHT get us unbanned.
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