Twitter’s 2,000 Follower Limit

January 19th, 2009 | Advanced Tweeting, Getting Started, social media

There’s a school of thought in the Twitterverse that says “Follow as many people as you can as fast as you can.”  They quickly run into a wall at 2,000.

Walled in at following 2,000

At this point, even if you find someone really cool you just have to follow, you can’t – at least not until you unfollow someone else.  This is Twitter’s way of protecting itself from “follow spammers”.  I wasn’t on Twitter way back in the beginning, but after seeing how some people follow 2,000 people the day they sign on, I can imagine how bad it must have been.

So, the limit of following 2,000 people was contrived as a mechanism to prevent follow spamming.  Once you have around 1,800 followers you can start following 10% followers more than are currently following you.  So, at 2,000 followers following you, you can follow a total of 2,200 people on Twitter. Hitting 1,800 followers indicates a form of, well, “social”, acceptance and then the gates are loosened just a little bit to make sure you don’t go too crazy one day.

Who to unfollow?

When you’re up against the wall and can’t follow any more people, here’s my advice on looking for people to unfollow.

1. Take a look at those whom you follow.
2. Go all the way to the end of the list.  The URL will be something like: http://twitter.com/friends?page=100

The people at the end are the people you’ve been following for the longest time. They’ve had the longest time to tune into what you say and to determine if they like your tweets. If you see a link to “Direct Message” someone you’re following, this is because they’re following you back.  Thus, the lack of the “Direct Message” option means they’re not following you. If they’ve unfollowed you, or have never followed you, it might be a good idea for you to unfollow them as well, since you obviously don’t have a connection.

Keep working your way back down your list of people you’re following until you’ve made it to a reasonable number.  Don’t just unfollow someone because they haven’t followed you back, and it’s been a whole day…  some people have different Twitter schedules.  I think a week is a reasonable time to see if someone cares about what you have to say.