Twitter Limits Have CHANGED: Did You Know There Are At Least 7?

Twitter Limits Have CHANGED: Did You Know There Are At Least 8? #twitterlimits

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:

  1. 2,000 Now 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.]
  4. Tweets Per Day: Originally 1000, but now 2400 tweets per day
  5. Tweets Per Hour (or semi-hourly interval?): I have not found a specific number; however, one could theorize this would be approximately 1000 NOW 2400 divided by 24 hours = about 41 NOW ~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.
  6. Direct Messages: Originally 250 per day, but now 1000 per day; originally limited DMs to 140 characters; now up to 10,000 characters.
  7. Changes to Account Email: 4 per hour
  8. 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 from 500).
  9. 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.

twitterdicted
~ Image Credit: Brad Fitzpatrick Humourous Cartoon Illustrations ~ Need a custom cartoon or clipart done? Use the contact tab on his blog to contact Brad.

Official Twitter Pages About Twitter Limits:

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

Published by

Gail Gardner

Founder of GrowMap, Small Business Marketing Strategist, freelance writer and BizSugar Mastermind Community Manager.

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