Little Known Twitter Limitations
You use Twitter constantly for your business but you may not be aware that Twitter has some limitations that may affect your use. A lot of the limitations may not be any big deal but they are important to know.
A limited number of followers
Once your Twitter account is following 2,000 other Twitter users, if you try to follow additional people, you will be limited by ratios that are specific to your account. If you have that many followers (which many people do not), you will get a message from Twitter once you have reached that limit. Two thousand people is a high number for “regular folks.” You will receive notification that you have reached that limit and you will have to wait until you are given permission to go over that limit before you can follow any additional people. If you are connected to someone on Twitter and they are at their 2,000 follower limit, please don’t take it personally and unfollow them. They don’t really have any control over the situation. If you reach your Twitter limit and have other people with whom you wish to be connected, you need to look at your others and consider if you can do without following them. If you feel that you can, you can substitute the new followers for the ones that you already had.
Your following percentage is higher
Twitter allows you a slightly higher percentage of people whom you are allowed to follow than who are allowed to follow you. According to Twitter, the limit is not a set number. It is different for every person and it is based on the ratio of followers to following. Once you have hit the limit, an error message will appear in your browser. Once you have more followers, you will be able to follow additional people as well.
Daily following ability
You are only allowed to follow 1,000 people a day (this is pretty generous). You should be careful not to send tweets too frequently to the same followers, however, because you will hit the limit, which may lock your Twitter account for up to 24 hours. It is a good idea to follow people during less-popular hours (perhaps during non-business hours) in order to avoid your limit. You wouldn’t want your limit to prevent you from tweeting some really important content.
Daily tweet limit
Your daily tweet limit is 1,000. Of course, that is pretty generous. Depending on how actively you tweet, you will most likely not get close to the limit of 1,000 tweets a day.
Hourly tweets
If you divide 1,000 tweets in a 24-hour period by 24, you can do 41 tweets in an hour. What is the chance that you will exceed that in any given hour during business (or even during your personal time)? You also have a limit of 250 direct messages a day. If you compare direct messages to Emails, would you really send that many Emails in one day?
Conclusions
Twitter is an excellent social media tool for business. It is important to be aware of what it can do for you and what it can’t do. It works most effectively one on one and is a tool that is tailor made for customization. Twitter is constantly striving to meet the needs of its users and feedback is taken very seriously and the suggestions that are communicated are implemented to a great extent. The tweets always cater to the individual. The chances are great that you will not go anywhere near the limits that have been discussed here. However, it is very important to be aware of the rules that Twitter has established so that you can use it in the most effective way for your business.
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Group: Medical/Healthcare Communications, Medical Education, Pharma Advertising & Marketing Professionals
Discussion: Little Known Twitter Limitations
Excellent tips…a must read for anyone using twitter. Thanks
Posted by Anneliz Hannan
As if 140 characters was not a limitation enough, I can only tweet 41 times an hour for every 24 hours? I can only do 1,000 tweets a day. Good thing I am not a kid. I think they could reach that in less than a day. Thanks for the great information, Carolyn. I"m going to pass this on to the kids I know.
Actually, it's very easy to go over the 41 tweets per hour limit if you are participating in a tweet chat. Especially if you are the host, interviewee, or moderator.
Very interesting, Carolyn. I wasn't aware of the 1,000 tweets per day, but then again – WOW not sure I have that much time on my hands, but as Martha G mentioned I'm thinking you could reach that with a tweet chat. I've not done that, but I can see them limiting much of what you say here.
Hi Carolyn, it's good to know that Twitter has these limits. I think people should grow their following naturally and without automation. Thanks for the info.
I had no idea about these limitations on Twitter, so this was very interesting and useful information. Thank you.