The 2000 Twitter Following Limits

This article was originally posted on TwittNotes.com, a blog specially dedicated to improving your Twitter experience. Having seen some tweets from people asking about the 2000 following limit on Twitter, I decided to reprint this article here in it’s entirety, so readers of iblogZone may also benefit from this information.

Following Limit On Twitter

If you are new to Twitter, chances are, you still have not attained the 2000 barrier limit imposed by Twitter. Twitter has a following limit of 2000 people based on the number of followers you have. This means that you can not follow more than 2000 people unless you have the same amount of followers. This barrier exist to avoid a lot of things, among which, is spamming. It does not make sense to follow a lot of people and no one following you. This obviously is against the intent of the Twitterverse.

How does it work?

This limit actually works on a percentage level (10%), but only when you are almost following 2000 people. As an example, say you have 1900 followers. 10% of 1900 is 190 and adding this to 1900 you will reach a total of 2090. This means that you can not be following more than 2090. When you reach this limit, Twitter will not let you follow more people, until such a time that your followers plus 10% increases.

Let us take the example above and continue with it.

• You have now 2090 followers. Add 10% to that and you will get 2299. You can now follow up to 2299.
• Now you have 2299. Add 10% to that and you will get 230. You can now follow up to 2529.
• And it goes on like this.

How do you control the 10% limit?

You may find a lot of varied opinions on what is the best practice on following or not, people on Twitter. I believe that it is polite to follow those who follow you, and for that matter, the other way around. Unless you are specifically interested on somebody, I believe that it is not impolite to unfollow those who do not follow you. Obviously, there are people that may interest us in following them, regardless whether they follow us or not. Example of these people can be Barrack Obama, Guy Kawasaki, Google, CNN, etc. Also, you should make it a point to follow people that have the same interest as you. It is likely that you will get them to follow you, if you share the same interest. Do not follow people just for the sake of having your numbers high. Ultimately, this will hurt you, and your credibility. Just like anything else, Twitter or micro-blogging is about sharing knowledge, entertaining and being polite. Give your followers something of value. Telling them that you are having a cup of coffee does not seem to valuable enough, don’t you think?

So there you go, when you reach the limit on Twitter, simply unfollow those who do not follow you back and that will raise your limit again, until you reach the 10% gap.