DISQUS

Scripting News: Twitter limiting followers to 2000 (Scripting News)

  • ericflo · 1 year ago
    They can grow beyond 2000 followers. It's the other way around--you can't follow more than 2000 people.
  • Michi · 1 year ago
    @ericflo, thx for the clarification. A limit to 2000 _followers_, wouldn't make much sense. What if you'd like to follow so. and he/she has already 2k followers etc. ...

    But then, even though the 2k follow limit is quite high, doesn't this divide the users into the ones you want to follow, and the ones you only follow if you still have some "free slots"?
  • Brad · 1 year ago
    Is the follow limit a hard 2000? I thought it was more of a ratio? I'm capped at 2100 and I've submitted 3 support tickets trying to get the follow limit removed, but haven't received any response yet.

    I wrote a blog post venting about it here:
    http://www.strangework.com/2008/07/28/twitter-f...
  • achernow · 1 year ago
    Is this in reaction to their growth problems? Is it temporary? Didn't Facebook just lift a similar cap?

    I think they need to allow *certain* Twitter accounts (ex: @CNNBRK) to have unlimited followers.
  • Jesse Stay · 1 year ago
    I think they need to make it fair either way - if I can't hit 2,000 (I'm at 1,200 right now) then why can Scoble or Leo Laporte or others do so? Make us all pay if we want that, but don't give certain users exclusive privileges.
  • Steve · 1 year ago
    As more people and news sources start using twitter, it could get pretty easy to start following over 2000 (or 2100 or whatever the limit becomes).
  • gregorylent · 1 year ago
    i follow only a relative few, but only get every tenth tweet or so those people send. i think they have put a governor on the system, just like a car that can only go 55. even if you sent me the news bulletins, and i was following you, i probably wouldnt get them, 2000 or not
  • Dario Salvelli · 1 year ago
    I think that is a good limitation, also for spammers. Do u have 2000 friends for real or are only online relation? It's impossible to manage this high number.
    So: i write some weeks ago about the business model Twitter. Two way: advertising on the search engine (as Google model) and company that pay to have a business account on Twitter (more than 2000?).
    What do u think?
  • Andy Piper · 1 year ago
    Well it's variable anyway - Scoble is on 21,000. The number is crazy anyway.
  • Dario Salvelli · 1 year ago
    P.S. I want to signal you this post: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=217
  • Ben James · 1 year ago
    You've got it the wrong way round, Dave -- those 3 posts you linked all say that the limit is on the number of people you can follow. Two of them just misuse the "followers" terminology.
  • Loic Lemeur · 1 year ago
    Hi Dave, looks like it is the number of people you follow that is limited, not the number of people following you
  • greywulf · 1 year ago
    Sounds very, very good to me. I really hope that the business model falls in line with your $X per thousand suggestion.
  • perilla · 1 year ago
    Perhaps this limit is put to have some quality control? upper limit in number of what one can follow will compel to pick and choose whom to follow. This is good because I don't think our attention span or time can anyway allow following even 2000 or even 1000 people closely or even at all.

    Many boast of following every important (what they dub important) people on twitter. Following for sake of following and show. This will be cut short as well. Good riddance.

    Ultimately, this is good for long-term. Quality among followers will get better because they will have to make a conscious choice of whom to follow not to exceed the number 2000.

    Perhaps also there is also a glimmer of business model? Wanna follow more, pay money?
  • Scabr · 1 year ago
    Twitter's Officials:looks like no Followers limit http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id...
  • christian · 1 year ago
    No limit, "folks, you can have as many followers as you want—there is no limit on your Twitter popularity potential" - biz
    http://twitter.com/biz/statuses/885222930
  • rabble · 1 year ago
    Seriously folks, who the hell can keep track of more than 2000 people's twitters?! All they are doing is enforcing reality.
  • supacool · 1 year ago
    Wallstrip had an awesome episode about Twitter yesterday....http://www.wallstrip.com/2008/08/11/twitter/
  • sea_dot · 1 year ago
    But... Obama reads all of my tweets, right? RIGHT?
  • Jonas · 1 year ago
    I'm in two minds about this. I'm not shure it's cool. It's not just about who gets followed but who gets to follow. Who gets to follow and who gets kicked off. I think it would reduce Twitter to something more exclusive than it was meant to be. I follow people I find interesting, fun, useful, whatever. If more services impose limits what do I do? Find somebody less interesting to follow? Doesn't seem fair to me. I think it would kill Twitter because somebody would come along with a follow-who-you-like-service. Bet you didn't think of that, eh? :-) Or maybe you did =:0
  • Robert · 1 year ago
    This sounded like nothing but good at first, but I then realized the odd predicament it would put me in if I ever reached 2000 followers (not ever likely to be a real problem for me!) The problem for me is that I've always felt it good etiquette to follow most everyone that followed me, so long as they weren't spammers, or site promoters etc. I guess it would simply be an adjustment in thinking, and maybe a reality check for some!
  • Debbie Morgan · 1 year ago
    I think it's a good idea. As someone who uses social marketing to raise awareness for my safety and security web site, I find adding friends too quickly makes it difficult to build even a small relationship with someone I'm friending or following. Slower builds discourage spammers and allow for the kind of community the site was intended to create.
  • Sol Young · 1 year ago
    If it's a way to keep spammers in check, it's not going to work (http://solyoung.com/2008/08/12/easy-way-for-spa...). It's a piece of cake to continue spamming. It would be incredibly short sighted if the folks at Twitter did it for this reason.

    With their queueing system, the load is on the status delivery. I could understand limiting the number of people who can follow someone else. That makes sense to me... 10,000 SMSs to send is a very large number, especially if Scoble gets chatty and those 10,000 have to be sent a few times per minute.
  • Max · 11 months ago
    I have very mixed feelings about this hard line approach.
  • Games · 10 months ago
    They are trying to stop trafic sales from followers numbers
  • Max · 10 months ago
    Oh I see, thanks for pointing that out.
  • Tweet man · 7 months ago
    I saw that www.followtweet.com has a workaround
  • arthur chappell · 9 months ago
    I am now affected by the limitations - My views on the limits are given in detail at http://arthurchappell.me.uk/twitter.limitations...
  • jeremy · 7 months ago
    my twitter just reach 2000 followers today and it stop there, no more follower can be add. Really nothing we can do to break the 2000 limit?