Twitter recently changed one element of their service. In their words:
We’ve also placed limits on the number of people you can follow. The number is different for everyone, and is based on a ratio that changes as the account changes. If you hit a follow limit, you must balance your follower/following ratio in order to follow more people- basically, you can’t follow 50,000 people if only 23 people follow you. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable.
Now when I first read this, I assumed this was indeed fair and reasonable. From their example, it seemed like this would only kick in if you had a huge discrepancy in the number of followers to the people that you were following such as their 50,000 to 23 example. It seemed like a good way to combat spam and I was all for it.
Until I was limited.
I was trying to follow what would have been my 2,000th person and I was told that I was not allowed any more followers. But instead of their 50,000 to 23 example, I was only trying to follow one more than 2,000 people while I had a little over 1,600 following me. Now, not to nitpick but this seems a little unreasonable and unfair. I am clearly a real human Twitter user, I interact with the community and I have a decent number of followers. I am not something with 2 tweets about Nokia spam who has 3 followers. How is my following another person wronging the community?
And I know I am talking about myself so I am not exactly unbiased by we are talking about a difference of less than 500 followers and you cut me off? Um, hello? Shouldn’t we set that range a little bit farther apart?
Here is where this gets extra dumb. You may say to yourself, if you are following 2,000 but only have 1,600 following you, just unfollow the people who aren’t following back. But, you see, I can’t. Most of the people I am following who aren’t following back are my favorite celebrities, authors or the big websites like CNN. Those are some of my favorite things to read on Twitter so I am not willing to get rid of those.
By tying the number that you are allowed to follow so tightly to how many follow you, essentially, Twitter is almost forcing you to only keep followers that follow you back. After all, if I am only allowed 2,000 and I follow CNN who isn’t going to follow me back, I have just wasted a spot that might have gotten me a potential follower which, in turn, would have gotten me the ability to follow more people. It is basically creating a heavy bias against Twitter users who don’t automatically follow back but most of the biggest users don’t follow back. So following accounts like Oprah, CNN, the White House, etc will actually hurt your ability to get more followers. What a dumb double edged sword!
So now, since I am unwilling to give up some of the big users that don’t follow back, my only choice to reduce my number of followers is to delete some of the non-follower backers or delete some actual followers. So I went through and got rid of every Twitter account that was basically a repeat of something I already subscribed to via RSS and then, when that still wasn’t enough, I started to delete followers that looked like they might not be of interest to me. I tried to just do the ones that looked like weight loss or other spam but I am quite sure I probably lost some real users in the shuffle.
So, I got myself down to 1,700 something but, of course, quite a few of those people that I unfollowed automatically unfollowed me. Now, they may have been spammers so you would say Good Riddance, right? But now, I just lost a little more following power because, no matter who they were, they were following me and their departure neuters my following power a bit. So now I am even farther away than when I started of being about to follow more people.
This seems like madness. I understand the sentiment behind it but it seems like they went a little overzealous with the coding. What should be a policy to stop spammers is instead behaving like the hall monitor that was given too much detention power.
My biggest concern is that I try to automatically follow back everyone who follows me and then I just unfollow people that spam or annoy manually so I try to give everyone a fair chance. The downside to this is that I keep rehitting my limit every few days and so there is going to come a point where I will no longer be able to follow people back because I am over my limit. I feel like this loses me follower goodwill and the potential of meeting an interesting person both.
Have you been limited by the new follow limits? Tell us your tale below. Even if you haven’t been harmed by the new limits, what do you think of them?
Oh and, if you are willing, please follow me on Twitter. It’s the only way I will ever be able to follow more people at this rate!
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Oh my goodness…with this kind of rule, Twitter didn’t just change one element of their service, they changed THE SERVICE, of their service.
I have two accounts on Twitter—Janine1818 and Rigbys. I just joined Twitter not too long ago so my numbers are really low—followers and following. I think it will be a long time out before I would have to worry about running into the these limit rules but I still think they are stupid. I can’t even dumb myself down enough to get the logic. lol
We can keep in touch here. I will always be coming back to read your stuff & keep in touch. 🙂
I have also run up against the Twitter follow / follower limit. It is very frustrating, I am a real person who was finding benefit from Twitter. I found old friends, people found me who became friends, people who were friends of friends became friends. All very cool. Some were spammers and bot activated followers but they were easy to weed out. I always followed people back and now am not able to do that. It makes me look like I’m not there and I really am here I have my picture and my Bio posted for all to see. So maybe Twitter will figure it out before the phenomenon goes away
Rik,
I would suggest trying out the Twitter service I recommended here: http://thewhineseller.com/2009/06/hitting-twitter-follow-limits-bulk-manage-followers-with-inrev-twitlin/
I took a few hours last week and unfollowed any remaining bots or people that just don’t really enhance my Twitter experience and actually got it down to the point where more people are following me than I am following which should save me from hitting limits for a while.
It’s annoying to take the time to clean it out but hopefully it ensures you won’t hit limits for a while at least.
im in the same friggin shoes! so i went through my 1900 followers got rid of all i thought were spam or unrelated and ended up with 1500, yet i still follow 2000 andnow i cant follow more! what kind of a moron ccame up with this system?! i will follow u buddy (just pls follow usback)
I'm having the same problem now. The hard part is also finding out exactly what the ratio is that Twitter is expecting. My follow ratio is about 1.3:1 right now and I can't follow any more because I'm following 2000. At what ratio will Twitter allow me to follow more than 2000? Is it 1.2:1 or 1:1? Or something else even? The only good part of this is that I've found quite a few spammers in my following list that I took the time to delete. I guess that is good for everyone, but I'm still at my limit and so I'm still peeved until I figure out how to get past this.
I would be so happy to follow you on Twitter. Except that I am caught in the exact dilemma you described. I am following 2000 people and have 1743 followers. I was going to try some of the strategies you've listed above but it just doesn't sound like it works well despite the effort. This is extremely frustrating! Did you try to contact Twitter about it? Were they responsive?
so glad you shared this!
@ndefalco
I would be so happy to follow you on Twitter. Except that I am caught in the exact dilemma you described. I am following 2000 people and have 1743 followers. I was going to try some of the strategies you've listed above but it just doesn't sound like it works well despite the effort. This is extremely frustrating! Did you try to contact Twitter about it? Were they responsive?
so glad you shared this!
@ndefalco
I used to think facebook was over zealous and authoritarian, till i found twitter. they deleted my account for no reason. cant even take any chances on twitter anymore
What a great article, haven't got this problem at the moment but a lot of my followers are people I wouldn't follow back so can see this as an issue eventually.
I'm having the same problem. I bought automation software to increase my followers, but I only use it to follow people with similar interests because I wanted to be able to reach more people. In other words, I'm not a Twitter spammer trying to sell get rich quick schemes.
My gripe with Twitter isn't that they made rules but that they don't tell you the rules when you sign up for the service, and then they expect you to follow rules that you didn't know existed.
I’m having the same problem. I bought automation software to increase my followers, but I only use it to follow people with similar interests because I wanted to be able to reach more people. In other words, I’m not a Twitter spammer trying to sell get rich quick schemes.nnMy gripe with Twitter isn’t that they made rules but that they don’t tell you the rules when you sign up for the service, and then they expect you to follow rules that you didn’t know existed.
Wow, this is fascinating and something I hadn’t considered. I already follow you on Twitter (which is how I saw the link) and I’ve never run up against this myself since I only follow maybe 1/3 of people who follow me, but you’re totally right about the system being screwy. Have you shared this with the Twitter folks? Seems like a sound argument you have.
Tawna
The one thing I’ve learned since I first wrote this is that the limits seem to reset daily. So, let’s say its Follow Friday and I follow a bunch of people at once and it says I’ve hit my limit, then I just wait a day and usually it will let me follow people again. Now, if this is because others have followed me since and thus upped my limit, I can’t really say.
Sadly, I’m in the same situation right now – I don’t want to unfollow the BIG and/or COOL peeps (news, programs, tips, celebrities, etc etc etc). I also REFUSE to unfollow anyone who’s following me back. I sell for a living myself – I would only unfollow if they’re really spammy and/or very annoying.
So, I’ve got my huge (HUGE!!) list of unfollowed BIG tweeps that I still want to follow… but when someone follows ME, I make space and follow them back. The huge list grows bigger and bigger, and I REALLY hope they change it to something much more fair. I tweeted about it too – http://twitter.com/tnaid — oh, and if you follow me, I WILL make space to follow you back!
I’m having the same problem, I have about 1,800ish followers and they won’t let me follow one over 2001 -_- and I WOULD follow you… but Twitter decided I’m a spammer and I can’t follow more. Grr.
I’d like to follow you, but I am also in the same boat