Twitter is starting to limit how many other Twitterers any one person can follow. While the number varies based on different factors, for most people (other than Robert Scoble)
the ceiling seems to be 2,000. This has caused some consternation among bloggers (blogsternation?). You’d think Twitter was limiting free speech. But it’s not. It’s trying to limit spam and perhaps this will help with its scaling issues as well.
There is still no limit on how many people can follow you. And some people (like Scoble, who follows 21,000 people), may be grandfathered in. For normal humans, though, there is really no need to follow more than a few hundred people. (Although, a fake follow would be nice just so people don’t feel bad when you don’t reciprocate their follows).
But the power of Twitter is more about how many people are following you than how many you are following. It is about pulling together an audience and talking to them directly, and letting them reply directly in a way that seems intimate but is still quasi-public.
The limit on how many people you can follow actually reinforces this dynamic. When you send out a Tweet, it is a one-to-many communication. When you follow other people’s tweets, that becomes a many-to-one river that quickly becomes hard to manage.
Some people are suggesting that Twitter might start charging a premium subscription for people who want to follow more than 2000 others. But I’m not sure there’s much of a business there. Hard-core Twitterers might be more willing to pay for guaranteed up time or other extra features. If Twitter is going to charge heavy users extra, it would make more sense to charge people who have a gazillion followers because they have more to lose if they can’t use Twitter: their audience. Except that would only work if there were no other alternatives they could migrate to, such as FriendFeed or Identi.ca .
And if you ask Twitter co-founder Evan Williams what his business model will be, as we did, he’ll tell you he is thinking more along the lines of charging commercial users of the service than power users.And that’s probably a good idea, because alienating the power users is a sure way to drive them to other services, and their audiences with them.
This post was originally posted by our content partner Techcrunch and has been republished with permission.
September 16, 2008 at 12:32 pm
BS, that’s what I say!
September 9, 2008 at 5:48 am
That’s much better , in fact 2000 is way too high!
September 1, 2008 at 12:50 am
Haven’t starting tweeting yet, maybe soon.
August 25, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I think its a terrible move on twitters part. For people like Hilary Clinton who her campaign really put a large push behind her twitter profile and had thousands of followers it made it a powerful tool. With a limit of 2,000 it just makes it kind of useless. It would be like myspace telling people they can have a max friend count of 5,000.
August 24, 2008 at 1:25 am
I think there are not many peoples with more than 2K follower on twitter , so it is realistic limitation..
August 23, 2008 at 3:00 am
I think it makes sense cos there is so much spam – but it does makes it harder for the dominant such as yourself…
August 18, 2008 at 11:43 pm
The limit seems realistic enough. I won’t have a problem with it- 2000 followers is more than enough!
August 16, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Everyone seems to have their limitations these days, just like Facebook with their 5000 friend limit.
August 14, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I have found this with many of my colleagues as well. What industry are you in?
August 13, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Thanks for this post. Are you a happy?
August 13, 2008 at 11:14 am
LOL… why is twitter still making headlines? I must be getter old, i don’t get it.
August 13, 2008 at 10:17 am
I never understood the whole twitter thing really, and have never signed up for an account. Unless I’m mistaken twitter just seems like the “status” feature on facebook except just somewhere else on the web. And… There are no limits to the number of people that can follow you on facebook.
August 13, 2008 at 9:14 am
The more people you follow, the more followers you end up getting. Most people got a lot of followers by following other people, with people like Kevin Rose and CNN being the rare exceptions. CNN is following a whopping 1 person but has over 30 K followers.
August 13, 2008 at 9:09 am
“if calacanis and shoe and mike all become the same, with all of eachothers posts on their blogs, then what?”
Then the brainwashing is complete.
August 13, 2008 at 7:52 am
Apparently, this is quite feasible.
August 13, 2008 at 7:43 am
Very interesting. The biggest Russian search engine Yandex is estimated at 20 million $.
August 13, 2008 at 4:03 am
its not good limiting the followers….
August 13, 2008 at 2:42 am
I disagree, it’s a good move. If you are not spamming why would you want to follow more than 2000 anyway?
August 13, 2008 at 2:42 am
Well…if you ask me it is kinda dumb on their side. It’s like limiting your growth (userwise)! 99% Twitter users won’t be getting that many followers and the people that do are popular people so why not?
August 12, 2008 at 10:38 pm
I’ve made one more tweet than you, followed 3 people and 13 people are following me. I know they are all fake followers because I wouldn’t even ‘follow’ mem on Twitter.
Hopefully limiting numbers will limit these fake followers, unless of course they marketers just sign up for multiple twitter accounts.
August 12, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I bet a lot of people are in your boat, sometimes the signal to noise ratio is awfully high…
August 12, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Just skip it if you don’t want to read it, I don’t mind it.
August 12, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Twitter is just another mechanism to communicate with your customers. In a world where businesses are constantly trying to open a dialogue and have a meaningful interaction (not just some funny ad on TV or in a mag), anything is helpful.
August 12, 2008 at 9:26 pm
It sounds more like a move to limit growth. If you want to limit spam, wouldn’t you have to limit it in the other direction with how many followers you have? This doesn’t make sense to me.
August 12, 2008 at 9:12 pm
They need to cap it to keep their system from crashing. Until they launch updated underlying architecture, Twitter will keep having problems
August 12, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Well, it’s hard to imagine anyone buying a company that has absolutely no revenue model, no profitability.
August 12, 2008 at 8:47 pm
http://lnk.bz is the shortest one I know
August 12, 2008 at 8:44 pm
If they have the time to follow 2000 people, they probably don’t have the time to go out and meet you
August 12, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Yeah I agree with you on this one.
As long as there’s no limit on your followers, it should be fine.
August 12, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Maybe they’re still focusing on getting an even larger userbase until they feel the time’s right to actually squeeze money out of this?
Kinda like the facebook money-making mystery. Except they do make a lot from those $1 gifts!
August 12, 2008 at 8:26 pm
The spammers are going to be so upset? If you follow too many people you will never see many peoples tweets you’ll just see the latest…
August 12, 2008 at 8:23 pm
If they would have limited the ‘followers’ number, then you would have been right. I can’t see how the traffic could drop significantly for someone with the actual limitation
August 12, 2008 at 8:20 pm
they will limit the number of the people you can follow to 2,000 and not the followers (which is pretty reasonable). You won’t be able to follow more than 2,000 users but you will still able to be followed by ten of thousands of users.
August 12, 2008 at 8:16 pm
I don’t think that putting ads all over the place will work very good, they might add a premium account option with a lot more features, opening up a shop where they could sell all kinds of things with twitter name on them (this will also help them to advertise their service)…add some premium services…they will figure it out eventually if they won’t be bought by some giant corporation
August 12, 2008 at 8:14 pm
They should not limit the number of followers, That make no sens!
August 12, 2008 at 7:59 pm
but do you know over 20,000 people ? You can’t efficiently follow more than a couple hundred users…
August 12, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I’m a Twit because I signed up at Twitter, but have yet to tweet. I am following a few people, and a few people are following me, yet I don’t make a habit of checking out the twits and they have nothing to follow since I haven’t tweeted, twitted or whatever the twit you call it
August 12, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I’m guessing that either they are just waiting to get bought or will create other monetizable services that they can tell twitterers to sign up for.
August 12, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Every time I leave a twitter message, I get a couple of new follows. It seems there are a bunch of spammers hoping that I add them back or something.
August 12, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I still have not gotten into twitter. Just seems like a waste to me.
August 12, 2008 at 6:43 pm
2000 isn’t a bad idea actually..wonder if they’ll ever lower it again or make it higher?
August 12, 2008 at 6:37 pm
2,000 is quite a lot, but it’s funny to me that Twitter is worried about the amounts of followers when they have so many technical issues to still work out.
August 12, 2008 at 6:08 pm
2000 seems reasonable. There should be no reason to follow more than that. It’s hard enough keeping up with the 100 or so I currently follow.
Spammers will still get around this by opening up multiple accounts.
August 12, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Jemery, It has been difficult to find the time to twitter or tweet, I am trying to make one of four blogs rise to the top of the heap, and quit the others, but all of them are getting traffic now, using FeedJit as my measurement indicator on each blog. Sounds like I need to join twitter if I ‘m going to make my mark out in cyberspace? Thanks for the photo of you on the drums..Maybe there is some audio available? Respectfully, Nicholas http://www.donotreadthisblogunless.blogspot.com
August 12, 2008 at 5:37 pm
maybe twitting is like living a life with him… followers are all people he know!
August 12, 2008 at 5:30 pm
i dont think so.. but well twitter for some is a great referral for traffic…
August 12, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Somehow I don’t think it’s as easy as just paying to be able to spam. I’m sure they thought of this. If anything, I guarantee there will be more stringent monitoring for paid power users.
August 12, 2008 at 5:29 pm
well it doesnt make sense to me because i only have a hundred or so twitter follower… but well….
August 12, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Web host affiliate links on their Fail Whale (404 Page 2.0)
August 12, 2008 at 4:19 pm
It will be interesting to see how Twitter makes the step from a free service to starting making money out of it. That will decide about the future of twitter. Lets see which ideas they will bring up. Does anyone have a idea how they will monetize?
August 12, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Twitter is down 50% of the time I try to use it. I’ve given up.
August 12, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Really I would like to meet someone who has time to follow 2000 people lol
August 12, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I use http://ivyurl.com for all my tweets. The 140 character limit can be difficult at times.
August 12, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Some day they will bring back a friends time line, I originally had this posted on my own blog to give a sense of community, but after seeing what that did to the network I do not blame them for disabling this feature until they have the base of the network taken care of. Hopefully the fail wail will recoup and get healthy. Mean time Im playing with plurk as well.
August 12, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Oh, that will decrease the traffic to big bloggers..
August 12, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Anything to fix this dreaded “fail whale” epidemic.
August 12, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Newer user to twitter – would love to get more followers, but won’t have that problem.
August 12, 2008 at 2:50 pm
20k is ridiculous, but then again, Scoble is nuts
August 12, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Calacanis has more followers than Scoble, either way I don’t see how anyone can actually keep with with it.
August 12, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I still refuse to Twitter (or is it Tweet)?
August 12, 2008 at 2:16 pm
it’s always been a mystery to me how do they make money. I’ve read that they don’t take any cut from sms charges.
August 12, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Scoble is just a big nerd
August 12, 2008 at 2:07 pm
hmm .. I guess, I get it .. even thought w/ tweetdeck I could handle much more than 2000 and actually do read
.. on another note ..
does any of u know a way to figure out who’s inactive on twitter?.. something like no tweets in 5months or similar? ..
I don’t wanna delete anyone just because they’re not following me..
August 12, 2008 at 2:06 pm
how could anyone follow 2000 people ? this is not achievable… what can i say about this guy, Scobleizer, 20,000 ?? does he has time to sleep ?
August 12, 2008 at 2:03 pm
this have been explained before by Jeremy. Whenever you see a techcrunch post on Shoemoney’s blog, just skipped it…it’s that simple if it bothers you.
I’m not a regular reader of TC so when there some important news out, thanks to jeremy I don’t miss anything important.
August 12, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I think twitter on a marketing level is awesome for gaining prospects, but as far as using it as a method to promote spam seems stupid. I mean I only follow people that I think have an authentic value. If those people promote something through twitter, i take a look at it. If there are people out there that follow anyone that follows them then they are kinda asking for spam. In social networks I never accept all of the friend request I get, otherwise I would have hundreds of bands that I have never heard of and several thousand porn stars. I mean really I feel that spam in social networks can kind of organicall fail on its own, it doesn’t need help from twitter, in doing so twitter runs the risk of creating a bad reputation by limiting obviously popular users.
August 12, 2008 at 1:39 pm
i don’t get the partnership between shoe and techcrunch. if I wanted to read techcrunch i would read it. I do and I do, but I don’t need to read it twice. if calacanis and shoe and mike all become the same, with all of eachothers posts on their blogs, then what?
August 12, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Humor me, does twitter really bring in that much business?
It probably depends a whole lot on your business, but I’ve had a significant number of inquiries from Twitter. I’m not taking new work right now, so can’t say for sure how many would have turned into actual dollars, but I get asked for quotes all the time on Twitter.
August 12, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I guess it’s just another way for them to not have to deal with the real issue (server outages) although it has been quite a while since the last one.
August 12, 2008 at 1:18 pm
wow twitter 20 milion in funding some nice money
August 12, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Humor me, does twitter really bring in that much business? I think of the service as txt messaging internet friends to let them know what is going on. I suspect the reason Twitter was down because of the excessive use which over loaded the system. I do have a twitter account but have never really used it, should I start…hmmm
August 12, 2008 at 1:12 pm
This is a dumb move, especially if they’re going to charge to allow you to spam basically. They’re giving Friend Friend and other rivals another reason to show why they’re bettter. They have uptime and no random limitations.