Ian Anderson Gray
This article was first published over 10 years ago, but I'm still keeping it current.
See here for a list of updates over the years.
Twitter was rebranded as X by founder Elon Musk back in June 2023. A lot has been changing, and I'm in the process of updating this article with all the new features from X.
X (Twitter) Limits Table
| Type | Limit | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Max Characters per tweet | 4,000 (Twitter Blue Subscribers) 280 (Free accounts) |
As of March 2023, Twitter users who are enrolled in the Twitter Blue paid subscription can send Tweets with up to 4,000 characters. Free account users have a maximum of 280 characters per Tweet.
Twitter expanded from the original 140 to 280 back in November 2017. And in September 2016, media attachments, links and screen names in replies stopped contributing to the character limit. |
| Max Characters per direct message | 10,000 | |
| Tweets | 2,400 per day | Spread across a 24 period. There are also separate limits per half-hour periods, so you won't be able to tweet all 2,400 in one go. The half-hour limit is unknown for now. Retweets count towards the limit. |
| Direct Messages | 1,000 per day | |
| Changes to email address | 4 per hour | |
| Following | 1,819 | Above 1,819 you can follow this number +10%. |
| Number of Lists | 1,000 | You can only have 1,000 lists (this includes ones you have created and ones you follow) Before May 30th 2013 the max number of lists was 20 |
| Number of people in a list | 5,000 | Before May 30th 2013 the max accounts per list was 500 |
| Number of people you can follow | 400 per day (or 1,000 for verified accounts) | Standard Twitter accounts can follow up to 400 accounts per day. If your account is verified, you can follow up to 1,000 accounts per day. Thanks to Solomon (in the comments) for the update here. See more here. |
| How many people you can unfollow | Unknown | Twitter doesn't state this, but you are likely to get banned if you unfollow people aggressively. I'd recommend sticking well under 400 unfollows per day. |
| Max Characters for biography | 160 | |
| Max length of video uploads | 2'20" (140 seconds) |
MP4 video format with H264 format with AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)The audio format most live streaming platforms expect. audio. Max upload of 512MB |
| Twitter In-Stream Photo Size | 1024x512px | Max upload size of 5Mb (or 3Mb for animated GIFs). Supports PNG, GIF or JPEG |
| Twitter Profile Picture Size | 400x400px | Max upload size of 2Mb. Supports PNG, GIF or JPEG |
| Twitter Header Image Size | 1500x500px | Max upload size of 5Mb. Supports PNG or JPEG |
| Number of Twitter accounts one phone number can be added to | 10 | See phone FAQs |
The Follow Limit
You may be new to Twitter, or you may have been using it for a long time and hit the famous "2000" limit. Later Twitter increased this to 5,000.
Most social networks have limits in place for the number of people you can "friend" or "follow". For example, Google+ currently has a limit of 5,000 people you can have in your circles, and you have a limit of 5,000 "friends" on Facebook. This is to stop people, businesses or automated programs from abusing the system.
On Twitter, it used to be possible to bulk follow thousands and thousands of people in the hope that they would follow you back. This caused many Twitter accounts to abuse this and follow tens of thousands of people whilst not creating engaging content and not having many people follow them back.
Not good.
Twitter launched back in March 2006. But it wasn't until July/August 2008 that Twitter started imposing limits on the number of people you could follow.
Twitter was having massive problems with spam (as Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone blogged at the time). There was a lot of backlash at the time, and a lot of confusion (see this ZDNet post on Twitter Spam efforts goes overboard).
It's commonly assumed that Twitter introduced a 2,000 following limit, meaning that you could only follow up to 2,000 people. However, this isn't strictly true.
The Following Ratio
According to the author, Rob Brown, the magic number is actually 1,819! This means if you have 1,819 followers you can break through the 2,000 limit. Below 1,819 you are capped at following 2,000 people. Above 1,819 you can follow this number +10% (or 182). At 1,819+10% this means you can follow 2,001 people and you have just broken the 2,000 limit- hurray! This (as Rob Brown mentions on
This means if you have 1,819 followers, you can break through the 2,000 limit. Below 1,819 you are capped at following 2,000 people. Above 1,819 you can follow this number +10% (or 182). At 1,819+10% this means you can follow 2,001 people and you have just broken the 2,000 limit- hurray! This means for every 10 people that follow you, you can follow 11.
Update - from October 27, 2015, Twitter announced they were increasing this follow limit from 2,000 to 5,000:
I haven't tested this, but I am fairly sure that the same system will be used for this new limit. To break through the limit you will need to have more than 4545 people following you before you can break through the 5,000 limit. Let me know what you think!
Personally, I think this is a good thing. I'm a bit concerned when I see someone with a large number of people they follow- especially if they don't have engaging content. Twitter is about engagement and networking- it is a social network after all. Having said that, following a large number of people isn't always a bad thing. I love to follow new people, particularly those who Tweet about social media. I manage a large number of followers using Twitter lists- putting the people I find particularly interesting into my "awesome" list. Less regularly, I'll check my main Twitter stream, and perhaps add some cool people to this list.
There is also a limit on how quickly you can follow people. Twitter has imposed a technical limit of following 1000 per day. Thank goodness for that! However, as this is a technical limit, following that amount per day is likely to get you banned due to breaking Twitters Following Rules and best practices (you should read this if you haven't already). And since March 2019, Twitter says normal accounts can't follow more than 400 or 1,000 if your account is verified.
Unfollow Limits
So, how many people can you unfollow? This is more of a tricky question since Twitter doesn't actually say.
Twitter tools such as Social Oomph and Manage Flitter have been asked by Twitter to remove their unfollow tools because this could go against Twitter terms.
The issue is what Twitter calls "aggressive follower churn" i.e. following and unfollowing people in quick succession with the aim of rapidly increasing your followers.
So, is there a number of how many people you can unfollow at one time? Just use your common sense. I've unfollowed over 500 people in one day, but that was a one-off- I wanted to unclutter my feed, but if I unfollowed 500 people each day, I'd likely get banned.
Other Limits
There are other limits, as the Twitter support pages states. You can post up to 2,400 tweets per day (this is spread throughout the day- there are limits per half hour, so you can't just post 2,400 all at once!) You can post up to 250 direct messages per day (thank goodness!) You can change your email up to 4 times per hour (why would you want to do that anyway?)
You can post up to 2,400 tweets per day (this is spread throughout the day- there are limits per half hour, so you can't just post 2,400 all at once!) You can post up to 250 direct messages per day (thank goodness!) You can change your email up to 4 times per hour (why would you want to do that anyway?)
You can post up to 1,000 direct messages per day (thank goodness!) You can change your email up to 4 times per hour (why would you want to do that anyway?)
As of May 30, 2013 you can now follow up to 1,000 lists (up from 20) and each list can include up to 5,000 accounts (up from 500). There are also limits when you use the Twitter API (application programming interface)A defined way for one piece of software to talk to another. A streaming tool uses a platform's API to create a live post and read its comments., but that's another topic.
There are also limits when you use the Twitter API, but that's another topic.
Twitter recently added the option of adding a header image. These have a maximum resolution of 1500x500 pixels (with a max upload size of 10Mb. You don't have to upload your image at 1500x500, but it's best to make it close to that to give a crisp and clear image. Certainly, try to make it above 640 pixels in width otherwise it will look pixelated. Finally, your biography can have up to 160 characters.
Summary
So, there you go. Remember, Twitter is a social network- these limits are for your and my protection. Do you think these limits are appropriate, or do you think they should be modified? Let me know in the comments below.
History of updates to this article:
- June 2023 - Twitter was rebranded as X
- March 2023 - Twitter Blue subscribers can now send Tweets with up to 4,000 characters.
- March 2019 - Twitter announces a follow limit of 400 per day or 1,000 if your account is verified.
- November 2017 - The number of characters in a Tweet has been increased from 140 to 280
- May 2017 - Updated number of daily direct messages from 250 to 1,000
- October 2016 - Media attachments, links & screen names in replies no longer count in 140 character limit
- October 28, 2015 - Twitter has increased their follow limit from 2,000 to 5,000
- August 12 2015 - Twitter now allows you to send direct messages with up to 10,000 characters. The limit used to be 140 (the same as standard tweets)
- May 31 2013 - Twitter updates the number of Twitter lists you can have and the number of people you can follow in each list.
- January 6 2013 - Added biography character limit & Image sizes
- January 6 2012 - Added lists and unfollow limits
Its great to be reminded at times about Twitter rules. I guess as long as you provide quality and valuable content people will notice and will follow you without all the tricks on the side.
If this information is correct then how is it possible for people to follow over 2000 . I just saw someone who follows over 47,000 via twitter.
Thanks for your question. You can follow over 2000 people but you need to have to have 1819 people following you to break this limit.
Ok, thank you :)
I'm a bit upset with Twitter. I appear to have been assigned someone else's fake followers, all 26,000 of them! (I've blogged about it here: http://wp.me/pf1R0-2ow )
Because of Twitter's terms of service, it's quite laborious to remove them all. Unfortunately, Twitter isn't interested in suspending them. It makes me wonder why.
Wow- not come across that problem before. Some of us would like 26,000 followers, but definitely not if they are all zombie spam followers.
I'm a massive fan of Manage Flitter, but alas this only allows mas unfollowing, not mass blocking- and blocking 24,000 followers is a big undertaking.
Have you tried to contact Twitter themselves? I do know trying to get a response from them is hard, but I did manage when I encountered an issue with one of my client's Twitter accounts which was effectively hijacked.
It's definitely a big problem for you, I checked the new fakers tool from Status People and it says 97% of your followers are fake- http://fakers.statuspeople.com/Fakers/V/1
Twitter really do need to sort this out. People who buy followers should rightly be penalised but what if you are a victim of inheriting someone else's fake followers. I'm so sorry this has happened to you, and I wish I could do something to help. Do let me know how you get on.
Sorry for the late reply, Ian. I never did contact Twitter directly, but I did find Tweepi very useful. All it needed was time to devote to the tedious task of forced unfollowing in batches of 100. The good news is I've gotten rid of all the fakes (0% on Status People!) and I've protected my account for a little while just to make sure.
No problem- I expect you're a busy man (well unfollowing 10s of 1000s will take time!) Your comment and blog post inspired me to write an article on 4 Reasons why you should not buy followers-
https://iag.me/socialmedia/4-reasons-why-you-should-not-buy-followers/
Hope you like it!
Great info -- I must be equally geeky because I am jealous you started in Nov. 2006. My first (and personal account @JennyQ) was started in 2007. I'm having early-adopter-envy. :-)
Geeks are cool! It is great to be an early adopter. Have you seen my article on finding out when you joined a social network?
https://iag.me/socialmedia/how-to-find-out-when-you-joined-a-social-network/
Heyyy I follow @JennyQ :)
That's cuz I'm super lucky.
Great info. I hope one day twitter will tell the exact amount of people we can follow per day in 24 hours.
Thanks. The technical follow limit is 1000 per 24 day. As I said in the post, it's best not to try and follow anywhere near this per day as Twitter may see this as suspect.
May i add also that there are mentions and @reply limits too.
I was a victim this weekend and couldn't restore my account until i logged onto twitter via pc. I had to tick two options with one stating that i could lose my account forever if i violated twitter mentions again.
Though i have searched twitter and google thoroughly and haven't seen reference to this.
What happened exactly? How many mentions and replies did you do? Remember that there is an overall 1000 tweet limit every 24 hours, and this is spread across a 24 hour period. That means if you go a little mad with tweets (including mentions, replies and retweets) you may hit a limit. I'd be really interested to hear what happened. I am sorry to hear you had the issue- very frustrating.
Here's the mail from twitter:
***Hello,This account was suspended for sending multiple unsolicited messages using the @reply and/or mention feature. These features are intended to make communication between people on Twitter easier. Twitter monitors the use of these features to make sure they are used as intended and not for abuse. Using either feature to post messages to a bunch of users in an unsolicited or egregious manner is considered an abuse of its use, which results in account suspension.***I was sort of chatting but instead of @replying, i was quoting complete tweets. Another thing i have noticed is i no longer get notifications on mentions and replies to my handle. So now if i dont see them on my TL, i'll have to manually check, refresh my mentions continually or use mobile web to view mentions.
Good to know, the limits are ok for me, but the tricky question of unfollowing is still unanswered. I think twitter should give us an answer about that.
Agreed, but I don't see Twitter doing that any time soon.
Many times when I unfollow 105 people in one sitting, hitting # 106 it will tell me I have reached my daily unfollow limit. My followed/following is around 20k so I always have lots of users I follow that don't follow me back or quit following me back. I used to be able to keep it about perfect, but now it's more difficult. Just thought I'd share that quick info. 105 is the magic number I always hit. It didn't used to be this way. Friendorfollow.com makes it easy to quickly unfollow people even if it is manual.
Oh my goodness! This is why people choose Facebook over Twitter. You can't impose any kind of 'limits'...its a social networking site by-the-way! How rude it'll be if you impose rule in socialising! Am unpleased with it!
Facebook has limits too. Just about every major website I can think of implements limits. Its a protection for everyone. Google has limits too.
Hi Mehak, thanks for your comment. I do understand where you are coming from. In real life we don't impose limits in the way that Twitter does. However people can be anti-social in life and on a social network. For example I expect you wouldn't be pleased if you received nuisance calls or texts on your phone all day. Or if someone kept on mentioning to you that they have a way to make $$$$ every week etc etc. In real life we can put limits in place by avoiding people, not answering calls and basically filtering out the anti-social stuff. On a social network you would think it would be easy to filter the anti-social stuff out, but it's more difficult than you'd think. I can't filter out all the automatic direct messages I get from people to thank me for following them, or automatic mentions or tweets for other reasons.
If Twitter didn't have limits on the number of tweets or DMs you could send out each day, it would be even more of a spammers paradise. Just think, if a spammer could tweet millions of annoying messages!
As Scott mentioned, Facebook has limits (you can only have up to 5,000 friends for example) and the same for Google+ and LinkedIn. Most of these limits are for our protection and ones that I am in favour of. Some are for the protection of the social networks' infrastructure. For example, Twitter only allow you to access your last 3,200 tweets directly. Apparently this was down to managing the amount of load on their server. This limit they really do need to sort out!
Hi :) How about the mention limit? I have been suspended for succeeding the twitter mentions and reply. Do u have any idea on how many numbers can I reply with mentions? Thanks.
Looking forward for your response.
You wont get suspended for trying to exceed the limit of mentions and replies. Youll just temporarily go to Twitter Jail. Twitter Jail is a made up term people have for when they have gone over the Twitter limit and they force you to take a break for a while (usually about an hour). It's a good thing. It means take a break, go outside, do anything else, youve been tweeting nonstop for too long :P If youre getting suspended, youre probably doing something bad or wrong.
Thanks Abby for asking such a good question and Scott for such a fine answer. Twitter could really do with providing more clarity on this situation.
So I need 1,819 followers to break follow limit? I have 1,800 followers, so I need 19 to break follow limit?
Yes, that's right. It is a bit confusing. Once you have 1,819 followers and above you can break the number of people you follow.
Again I think Twitter allows us
to only take 3200 tweets so the amount of retweets is going to be the amount of
retweets for the last 3200 tweets. So if I have 6,400 retweets counted and
3,200 retweeted tweets are used to calculate my anteescore will be 0.
You're referring to the number of tweets we can access using the Twitter API I think. It's a shame that we can only go back to our 3200th tweet- all those tweets at the start of our Twitter journey are lost in the mysts of time.
I wasn't sure what you were meaning with retweets though. Are these included in the 3200 limit? If so, that's going to cut down the limit even more! Come on, Twitter- increase the 3200 limit!
hi, Im stressed and sad, im a twitter lover but i actually dont use it to share my thoughts or anything I use it to follow interesting people . I have already reached my following limit up to 2002 and it is so frustrating that i can not follow anyone no more. If i read correctly, did u say that if get 1819 followers therefor ill be able to keep following others. if I get 1819 followers or more how many people will i be able to follow or will they give another limit back again. I actually dont like the idea of having followers I love my privacy anyway, hope you can help me :(
Alternatively you could list people. I have 6 lists, each list maxes at 500 people, so currently I can follow 3000 on top of my current timeline. I like to display all the list in vertical columns next to each other and let my small hand picked world entertain me. Tweetdeck does this well, live streaming
Scott- that's a brilliant idea- thanks!
In reply to mas, I see your point, but as Scott says- do have a look at Twitter lists- it might solve your issue in the short term. It's all to do with the follow ratio- you can follow the same number of people who follow you + 10%. It's a bit tricky, but unfortunately that is the way Twitter works.
Thank you for your reply, it was so clear for me. now I know what to do. love this website :)
That´s an awesome suggestion, thank you . I'll be working on that today :)
is there a fast way to create 500 people lists?
is there a fast way to create 500 people lists?
Hello, I have been working on my lists- it takes a lot of time. but now it seem that I can only create 5 private lists and the others automatically became public, is there a way to edit that?
Creating lists does take time. I have no idea regarding private vs public lists. I have never concerned myself privates lists or that someone would want to follow a list I created of people. I can't think of anything they could tweet that I'd really care if someone saw. I could be wrong, but it seems pretty low on someone's to do list to check in what my unique list of people are up to. Not to mention how time consuming it would be for someone to check in to their timeline, their lists, then to have any time left to come check out my lists. If someone has a private account, random viewers will not be able to read the private users tweets you have listed unless that user has allowed them access to see their tweets, so anyone that has a private account will retain their privacy. Just my two cents on that subject. I know it's not really an answer so much as just a rant :) I guess what I'm saying is, perhaps you are sweating the small stuff here? Regardless, I do hope you find a solution to your unique scenarios so you can enjoy Twitter to the maximum degree that you desire.
Thanks for your reply. you have convinced me to make my twitter public, there is no point if can not share my thoughts with others. :)
As Scott says, creating lists does take time. Part of the reason for that is that Twitter's web interface makes it difficult. There used to be some amazing ways to create lists using a tool called Formulists. Unfortunately that tool is no more. Kristi Hines, on her blog, highlights a way you can get (kind of) the functionality of Formulists using the tool IFTTT- http://kikolani.com/marketing-tool-alternatives.html
You may also be interested in a tool I am creating called Twools which will allow you to send in a feed of users to IFTTT so that you bulk add users to a list. It's still in development but I hope to have it launched in beta next week. It's something you have to install on your own website to work- but it is very easy to do.
I tend to have most of my lists public, but I do have some private lists. The reason for that is because people get notified when they get added to a list. I have some lists I used for "internal use", for example lists of people who use a certain app. They are not relevant for anyone else, so I make them private.
I don't see the point of protecting your timeline in Twitter, though. You are missing out the main point of Twitter- networking and meeting other cool people. Of course Twitter is public - but that is a lot clearer than the privacy mess of Facebook. At least we know where we stand.
Thank you for your reply. I´ll try the tools you mentioned. The things is that I wouldn't be trying to make lots of list if I could just continue following people but I have already reached my following limit.
I tried to get as much as followers too but I was unsuccessful with my ambitious task. I tried to get more followers in websites like http://www.followmania.co/ but i think i actually gain ghost spammers. :/
(Right now im following 2001 users and only 403 are following thats why i can not follow anyone anymore. If only i could get more followers i need a lot of them in order to break my limit.) It would be awesome to get all the tech twitters user to follow eventhough im quite new in twitter.
I have recently found out that in my twitter home feeds "tweets" there are many users that I'm not following and appear on my feeds. I don't know how to get rid of them :/ . i have tried to block them and it work but then back again I get other out of no where.
Is there a way to check which are my followers and who i following in a fastest way? now that im following 2001 users is quite difficult to check all the users and wait to load them :/ , It would be easier if I could load in one single click( followers and the ones im following) or export that information to an excel, just exactly as I can do it in linkedin.
The other thing is that I can not edit my lists. those that are private or public i can not edit them. the save list is disable (totally un-clickable).
I hope you read this post and help me. I know its a lot of questions in one single post. I just wanna learn .. sorry :) and thanks :D
Ive followed around 5/600 per day for the last two weeks and when I cant follow no more I unfollow 1400 per day for 2 days then follow 5/600 again and repeat the process and never been s problem
Hi Adam, unfortuntately, Twitter updated their "Rules of the Road" last week and they have banned "bulk following/unfollowing". Quite how they define that is yet unknown. I've contacted ManageFlitter to ask them where they stand but no response as of yet.
Im still doing it no problem have a look follow me @monthlyprofits dm and we will talk
Sorry for taking ages to get back to you. I've followed you. If you do DM me, let me know- I get loads of spam so difficult to sort through! You could also email me ian [at] iag [dot] me
it sucks that we are limited to 140 characters per tweet. if you have a long tweet to write, you have to write part 1 part 2 so that people don't get confused. I HATE IT!!!!!!!
I know how you feel, but that is what Twitter is. If you want more chars there is always app.net, Google+ or even Facebook!
I like the character limit. If people could bombard me with super long messages all the time I'd probably lose interest. I also enjoy the challenge of learning to convey my thoughts with less words. It has made me a more efficient communicator.
True, Twitter is more of a quick fire conversation tool.
We've been having issues regarding the amount of people we are following per day, despite meticulously following the rules!
So our twitter account @ppigroupaction has been suspended on 2 occassions in the last 2 weeks.
First occasion was for "spam following". We actually only followed approx. 150 people.
While this may seem a lot, people don't always have something interesting or relevant to say relating to our campaign, so following lots of people allows us to catch those all important retweetable tweets! So how people are able to follow 500-600 is perhaps old, and they've changed their algorithms?
Second occasion was for the same reason, but we emailed to complain it must have been a mistake, and they agreed and reinstated the account.
My point is, the first couple of hundred follows - I feel - should be "free" from post 200 follow regulations. I think this is why so many people give up on twitter and so many accounts are left dormant - it's difficult to build a following initially, and to follow initially with the way things are too.
Is there a limit on the number of updates you can view on your newsfeed? When I refresh in the morning there is always a gap of 3-4 hours with no updates, and no "load more tweets@ button. Have I reached a limit?
Hi Dazz. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. No, as far as I know, there is no limit on the number of tweets you can have. I follow over 10,000 people and don't get any restrictions on the number of tweets. It sounds like it could be a browser issue or even an issue with your internet connection. Have you cleared your internet cache and tried again?
There does seem to be a limit to how often you can request Twitters servers to feed you information. If you load too many tweets in too short of a time they will stop loading. This happens to me a lot on Tweetdeck when the tweet traffic gets heavy. But, I'm with Ian here.. sounds like it's something else. You have to really hit the servers hard to get a temporary block on loading more tweets, and even so.. when the block is lifted there shouldn't be gaps in tweets unless it was literally a dead time that no one you were following tweeted.
Twitter will be Myspace within 2 years
how many @***** tweets can you do a day or hour without getting suspended? say your trying to spread your name & gain followers etc?
If you think you are going to copy and paste a lot of messages to promo yourself, you will get suspended for annoying people and getting reported as spam. If you try to manually type @ people with a unique message as fast as you can, you will only temporarily end up in Twitter jail. No one will be upset.
Thank you. very very helpful info. appreciate it
Thanks for that. Just glad you found it helpful- that was my plan! :-)
Hi, I'm a brand newbie to Twitter. How do I know if someone I follow has followed me back? Should I give them a week to return the favor and then delete if they don't? Cheers, Kasper :-)
You will be notified under the @Connect button at the top of twitter.com.. that is where new follows and replies will all show up.. Basically as combined activity on your account. It's totally up to you if you want to unfollow someone for not following you back (as fast as you'd like).. but remember they are just another human being. Maybe they haven't had a chance to get on Twitter to see who has followed and follow them back. Also, if you unfollow them and they end up following you back later, that's win win cause you'll be notified either way and then can reciprocate the follow back any time.
Well, Ian, I don't really understand Twitter. Just use it every now and then, but, one day I did follow SEVERAL people and within 2 days I got banned. I was allowed to get back on but now I am afraid to follow ANYONE! Also,i don't understand why some people's tweets go to the person they tweet and mine only go back to my own page. The only way I can get my tweet to a certain person is to reply to someone else's tweet. I thought I was doing it right. I go to, lets say USA_ Network. I go to the left side where is says"compose tweet" using the @USA_Network and write my tweet. A message comes up and says "your tweet has been sent to USA_Network" , but, it doesn't show up on their page--only goes to my own page. So, why can some people's tweet be seen on a particular person's page and mine can't? What am I doing wrong? Thanks, Pam.
Hi Pam. It sounds like you've had some rotten luck. You won't get banned for following several people per day. I've followed hundreds in one day before although that is very rare and I've not been banned. I do know that Twitter has some automated monitors in place that will automatically ban you if they notice strange behaviours. Doesn't sound like you were doing anything strange, but you may have been incorrectly flagged.
As for your other point, I may have misread it, but what you say is how Twitter works. When you compose a tweet with someone's screen name at the start- this will only be seen by them in their home timeline and in the home time line of people who follow both you and that person. People will also see the tweet if they visit your Twitter timeline. This tweet won't appear on their timeline unless they retweet it. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does make sense, Ian. I thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly and appreciate you so much! Have a great day!
im so mad at twitter right now i find it so stupid with the DM jail because it takes you forever to get out i've currently been waiting for over 2 hours please remove it
I joined a Get more followers things and now it wont stop following people for me and i keep getting spam about it. How do i stop it?
Hi Bree. Sorry to hear that. I assume you didn't give authorisation to an app for this? Just to check click on the settings cog in Twitter then click settings. Then click apps on the right and check through all the apps you've given permission for. Revoke any you don't recognise.
However as far as I know most of these "buy followers" services just pass on followers your way without needing access. This is much more tricky. Can you contact them and ask them to stop? It's also a case of blocking the people who spam you. I've never signed up for a follower service but even so I still get spammed regularly- I think a lot of people do.
Is there a point where sending constant (respectful, unique) tweets to the White house result in the twits being treated as spam/ Many activists groups encourage supporters to constantly send tweets to President Obama or the White House etc..
Hi, I'm wondering about the photo limits per account. I have tweeted on my account about 1,500 tweets since 2010-ish. Of these, about half of them have pictures. I've just noticed that many of my older tweets that used to have pics to them, now have no more pictures. For example, the link is still there (http://twitpic.com/32fc4q) but it is greyed out, and does not show the pic anymore. Intensely frustrating. Any way for us to access these pics again? Many thanks.
Most helpful article, Ian! Thank you.
Glad you found it useful!
Great article, thanks for being so clear and concise! It's a tricky business making sure you stay within limits, and i suppose twitter doesnt want to be too out straight about them, as they are already having issues with some folks. Imagine if we all got in on the action!
It definitely is tricky, and it's not helped by the fact that Twitter doesn't make all the limits clear!
I got a follow limit and I cannot follow anyone. Will I can follow people again or should I create a new twittwr account?
Hi Kate. How many people do you follow? If you follow 1819 people you'll have to wait until more people follow you, or reduce the number of people you follow. In the article I mention it is to do with the ratio of the people you follow to the people who follow you.
Hi, I was doing some mass pre-emptive blocking because of a couple of fairly aggressive hashtags. Some of the accounts I blocked seemed to be spamming or operated by bots, so I reported them as spam accounts: some had @ my twitter handle in with some abuse and got reported as "annoying": but most of them were just accounts I actively did not want harassing me because I was using the hashtags they campaign on. I just got a message from Twitter saying "Sorry, you are over the limit for spam reports!" This was when I had *not* tried to report the account I was blocking for spam. I tried blocking a few more accounts, and got the same message every time, even though I wasn't reporting the account, just blocking it. Is there a Twitter limit for number of accounts you can block? What is the Twitter limit for reporting accounts as spam accounts?
Hi. Thanks for your comment. I've never come across a limit of spam reporting. I don't think there is a limit for the number of accounts you can block, but that doesn't necessarily mean a limit doesn't exist. I think it is more likely that there is a limit to how many accounts you can block within a time frame. I know that Twitter has an algorithm (or two or three!) that can automatically flag your account if it notices "unusual" activity. My account has been locked a few times, and I have no idea why this happened.
I got the same. I just inherited an account with a new client. They have 15,000 followers but it appears 90+% is spam. Someones been buying followers in the past I guess. So, to get back some credibility I started blocking the obvious spam accounts (eggs that all stopped posting around 10 July and like to retweet @Gabriele_Corno pictures). I then got that message - "Sorry, you are over the limit for spam reports!". No warning of getting banned or anything. Question, should I continue doing this or will the account have action taken against it? To get credibility back we need to shed this excess but if I put the account in jeopardy my new client might not be too impressed! I estimate I got the message after 200-250 blocks.
Thanks, Steven. The spam reporting limit obviously exists, but Twitter are not stating this publicly. I have reached out to Twitter to ask for confirmation but not heard anything as of yet.
This is very interesting. Kudos to you both for investigating spam reporting limits! Interested to hear what you find out
Well, don't hold your breath. They haven't replied yet, and I don't think they will. Twitter have a very poor customer service record. If only I had a friend on in the inside! ;-)
I am currently following 27 people. Twitter says I am at the limit. What gives? I can find no way to ask them!
Hi and thanks for your comment. That's weird, there shouldn't be any limit to the number of people you can follow under 2,000. Have you tried to follow too many people in a short time scale? What's your Twitter name?
Hi Ian. Thanks very much for your post.
I'm finding a problem with adding people I follow to lists. After adding several people to my lists, whether through tweetbe.at (an online list manager) or through the Twitter web interface itself, it will no longer allow me to add more people. I'm trying to categorize my 600 followers into lists for the first time, and it's difficult if there's a limit of 20 or 30 at once.
Do you have any ideas about this? I'm using private lists and the people I'm trying to add are already members of other lists, so they haven't set any prefs to prevent it (if such things exists, I don't know.) Here are two screen shots to show you what I mean, with the error messages in purple boxes. (The Twitter web message says to reload the page, but that doesn't solve it.)
I'd really appreciate your helping me. I know that you must be very busy.
Many thanks,
Jonathan
jmenon [at] gmail [dot] com
Thanks for your comment Jonathan. I've not used tweetbe before- is it a useful tool? I tend to use Manage Flitter to manage my Twitter accounts, although it doesn't allow full management of Twitter lists. You should be able to add up to 5,000 people to a Twitter list, so I am puzzled as to why you are receiving an error message saying "you aren't allowed to add members to this list". However, that doesn't sound like a Twitter error. Have you tried adding more members to the Twitter list via the main Twitter website? If you can add them there, then the issue lies with tweetbe. Happy to continue to help on here, or please feel free to contact me via my contact form. Ian
Hi Ian,
I think Teeetbe would be excellent if it worked as intended, which it isn't doing for me in adding people to lists. It has an easy-to-understand interface, and displays more information than the Twitter website shows on a single screen. It's also a much faster way to add and remove poeple, and you can add several people to several lists at once with just a few clicks on the same web page.
I'll try again and let you know. Thanks.
hello!
i just wonder maybe if you know what is the limit of adding favorite per hour?
could u reply me at [email protected]
thanks!
Hi, sorry for the delay. There may be a "soft" limit for this, but Twitter haven't made it public. Have you encountered a limit?
Ian
Hi, Thank You for the Twitter 101, I have run into a problem though . I am not egotistical about who follows me but I love watching my news feed an gleaning the information and learning new things from who I follow. Recently I have noticed that many are following me each day but my number of followers does not change.I currently follow 2001 accounts and I am stuck at 923 followers for days now but many new followers on my notifications . Why is twitter not allowing my following number to rise when obviously I get from 4 to 10 new followers a day ?? WEIRD
Thanks for your comment. It looks like you have hit the follow limit of 2001. The number of followers not rising is more of a puzzling one. However, it could be that people are unfollowing you as well. Unfortunately it is a common tactic for people to follow you and then unfollow you if you don't follow them. This could be a reason why the number of followers is not increasing. Have a look at your number of followers and unfollows using a tool like Twittercounter or Sumall and see what is actually happening.
Ian
Thank You for your sage advice Ian, I will try what You have told me to do. If I could follow everyone who follows me I would but twitter wont allow me to. I do not get my panties in a wad if I follow someone and they do not follow me back. I guess I will have to figure all of this out. I will let you know .
No problem. Glad you'd not getting your "panties in a wad"! Try and look through the people you currently follow and see if any are worth unfollowing. You could use a tool like ManageFlitter to do this. If people aren't following you back and aren't engaging with you, you have to think whether they are worth following. Getting the number of people you follow and the starting to follow fresh people who are likely to engage with you is a good strategy. Also, embrace Twitter lists! I put the people I really want to follow in my "Seriously Social Awesome" Twitter list and that's the first place I visit when I go to Twitter. You don't have to actually follow all the people in your list, but you can still follow them in effect by adding them to the list. Hope that helps. Ian
I also got stuck at 2,000 follows and 1,100 followers. the 2,000 I understand but the 1,100 I don't. Keep getting more people following me but 1,100 doesn't move for over a day.
I found another limit -- if you are set so tweets go to your FaceBook wall, too many tweets in too little time and they start dropping the FaceBook copy. For instance, I go to click-to-give and click ten causes, tweeting each, daily, but my FaceBook wall does not show the last few. This block continues for a while, as I comment on the news. It really pisses me off, a broken promise. Some days I only get a short time to do my tweeting, and my FaceBook results are truncated.
Hi David. That sounds more like an issue with Facebook than with Twitter, but difficult to tell. Personally I wouldn't recommend an "always on" posting from Twitter to Facebook, because it doesn't always make sense (Twitter screen names are fairly meaningless on Twitter for example). You could use a service like IFTTT to send only certain Tweets to Facebook, for example if you use the hashtag #fb.
I've been getting the message "You have reached your daily limit for this action. Please try again later or add a phone to your account". I've only sent about 60 tweets or so. What limit is it referring to and what does a phone number have to do with it? I don't have a text-message capable phone, so using that number wouldn't work anyway since they want to send me a text message to confirm. What does a Internet-based social networking site need subscriber phone numbers for anyway? Are they farming phone numbers for later sale?
Hi Ron, thanks for your comment. As well as the limits I've listed in this article, there are also some secret, dark and mysterious limits that are only known to Twitter themselves. Some of these limits also vary and are determined by algorithms in the bid to combat spam. Whilst I haven't personally encountered this warning message before, I think Twitter want you to verify yourself using your phone. They are not selling numbers off, but it's a kind of "2nd factor authentication" which proves you are who you say you are- and that you aren't a bot. I know it is a pain, but if you can add your phone number and receive the code that will be sent to it and enter it back on Twitter, you'll probably find that you won't get these error messages. Of course this doesn't work if you have multiple Twitter accounts and only one phone, but I don't expect Twitter care very much about that. Ian
I've just had this message, and now I can't see Twitter at all, in any form, on any device. I tend to do a lot of tweets and retweets once a day. Today, I got that message after much less activity than usual. Over a period of 2 hours, I posted three tweets, retweeted about 10 things, followed one person, and sent one direct tweet. I'm so confused. If you want to see how small-time my feed is, you can see it at @QHWillisArt
I'm an artist, and only follow/interact with artists/art lovers/galleries, plus a handful of social marketing accounts and a few craft blogs. My follower score is 0% spam. So, I have no idea what I did wrong. I tried to add a phone number, but my mobile is already listed on my Twitter account.
I've had good luck with Twitter over maybe 450 tweets/retweets total. I'm a little worried about what I did wrong. And, I'm concerned that my account was compromised. The message was on a white screen with Times New Roman font, like in the early days of html.
I'm sure I'll get access at some point. But it's weird and annoying to have this happen. It's the second time I've been blocked - I followed too many artists the day I joined.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Is this still an issue for me, or has it been resolved? I looked at your Twitter account and can't see any reason why you should be having issues. You certainly haven't had your account suspended. Unfortunately, Twitter do put automated algorithms in place which try and detect unusual or spammy activity. Sometimes they get this wrong. I had one of my other Twitter accounts locked a few times due to it going wrong (unusually I received a personal message from the Twitter spam team about this).
This might seem an odd question, but are you accessing your Twitter account over the same WiFi or mobile network each time? The reason I ask is that Twitter do monitor activity over each IP. A social media trainer friend of mine found that there were problems if lots of people tried to sign up for a new Twitter account in her workshops because they were doing so over the same IP. If you are having issues, it might be good to try over a different network or try and sign in to your Twitter account via a Friend's computer. Ian
Wow. Thank you so much for the incredibly detailed response. I don't believe I've ever seen a blogger who is so knowledgeable and so attentive. I am not having the same issue anymore, thankfully. However, I have since discovered several other seemingly-arbitrary "limits". For example, two days ago I was briefly locked after adding 3 people to a list, while two days before that I added 50 people to the same list without trouble. I have since read a bit more on the issue that originally led me here, and it seems other people have had the same trouble, but I haven't seen any answers. It seems to be an uncommon event.
To answer your other question, I am not always on the same network. Throughout the day, I switch between LTE, my wifi and sometimes my parents' wifi, and occasionally a random free Comcast network if my laptop has decided to annoy me. So I don't see that as a likely answer. I've had temporary restrictions while on all ~5 networks, and they definitely all have different IP addresses.
Overall, it's been annoying to get cut off from Twitter fairly regularly for things I see as exactly the same as what I did before and have done since without trouble. But it hasn't taken all that much time away, especially as I dedicate only about 45 minutes a day to my account. I am learning as I go, and I feel it's been an incredible benefit to my career. Hopefully I'm not building a list of strikes against me! But I don't expect I'll have any huge issues down the road, as I've been online since the late 80s and while Twitter is new to me, I'm comfortable with proper internet behavior/etiquette in general. It's scary to realize I've worked with people who weren't even born when I was using BBSs and alt lists! (Yes I was a nerd who was blessed with a nerd family, and yes, I've forgotten some details of it all along the way. My first "encounter" with an online sexual predator was in 1988! It's almost a badge of honor now!)
Again, thank you so much for the detailed response. I'm now a frequent reader simply because you are so passionate about your subject. That quality, more than anything else, makes a blog/blogger interesting and memorable.
No problem, it's important to be as helpful as I can here. Time is the only issue! I really don't know what the issue could be with your Twitter account. Is it your Twitter account or just the Twitter website? I wonder if you tried to log in or create a new Twitter account whether there would be a problem. What actually happens? Is the Twitter account not accessible or do you get some kind of error message? If only you could email or call Twitter for technical support! The joys of a "free" service. Ian
I guess the comment tree went too far down, as I can't reply directly to your most recent reply. Hopefully this doesn't get confusing. It's definitely not my browser or app. I get some kind of notification from Twitter when it happens. Unfortunately, I can't even remember how I get the notifications, let alone the contents. My brain is too full! The message I got that brought me here was different, and that's why it stuck out. Also, those brief suspensions don't go away if I switch from phone to laptop, for example. I will start paying attention and keeping notes. Maybe I'll be able to see a pattern. If so, I'll pop back in to let you know.
I could create another Twitter account as part of my little investigation, but I don't think I'd actually use it enough to recreate the conditions of my current account. I don't have a whole lot to say! There's no legit way I can think of to build up 1,000 followers on a personal account as quickly as my art has attracted people - I don't share a lot of personal info on social media, and I keep just a small circle of true friends. It'd take ages to get people to follow via retweets, and lists, messages, all that junk, would be so annoying! I'm so busy with the business side of art that I don't know how I'd find the time for a second business account of any sort. If I kept up for a week it'd be an accomplishment. So, unfortunately I'm not going to be able to properly troubleshoot, and I'll have to live with the minor annoyances.
I still have a lot of learning to do, though. A couple nights ago, the account just blew up, and I got all kinds of new followers, favorites and retweets over maybe half an hour. I have so many people following and then unfollowing. I assume that's follower churning of some sort, because it seems most of the artists and professionals that follow me don't then unfollow me, with the one big exception being teenagers that are aspiring artists on top of their desire for social media popularity. I just check Crowdfire and see a whole bunch of people unfollowed during the day, but I never followed them and don't recall seeing them interact with my stream and they aren't artists. My follower numbers go up every day despite all the unfollowing I can see. And then the celebrities! Why on earth are such big names following me? It started with one "checkmark person" and there's been a few more who are "real famous" rather than twitter famous. I can't figure out how or why their PR person (I'm assuming it's never the real celebs) would bother to follow, and even interact, with me. Or how they found me in the first place. I don't follow any celebrities just because of their name - art and social media/marketing are all I care about on Twitter.
I know I'm late to the game and all my things to look into are beginner level. But there is so much to learn -- I can see how you would want to do this for a living. It's interesting stuff.
I get a huge number of follow/unfollow churn each day. It used to bother me, but not anymore. There are still many people who try and game the system by following a large number of people each day to see who will follow them back. If they don't follow back they will unfollow them. It's a way of increasing the number of followers you have, despite Twitter banning the aggressive follow/unfollow church technique in their terms and conditions. Most of these people will use a tool- they will bulk follow all the followers of another account, or do another kind of search.
I'm not sure what has happened to your account. It all sounds very odd. I hope you manage to sort it out. Ian
Does my tweet sent to all my follower?
All your tweets will appear in your follower's timelines, except for replies. When you reply to a tweet, and their screen name is at the start of the tweet, only followers that also follow the person you are replying to will see that tweet in their timeline.
Ian
I was trying to sign up with twitter but it keeps telling me they can't use my number why would it say that iv never had a twitter account before
That's odd. How long have you had your number for? The only thing I can think of is that someone else registered a Twitter account with your mobile phone number. Might be best to contact Twitter about this?
I am new to Twitter and has just follow 86 famous people and i has reach the limit.
Now I need to enter my phone number.
"You have reached your daily limit for this action. Please add a phone to your account to remove the limit."
This is a fairly new thing, and I can't quite work out what the limit is. I wish Twitter wouldn't require validating with a phone because it makes having multiple Twitter accounts hard. Have you entered your phone number? If so, has the limit been removed?
When I tweet out my (Give Forward) donation site, how many people will see it with one tweet?
I have 350 followers. Will they all receive it or do I have to send 2,3,4? more? And how would I do that?
I am new to twitter. I set up a list of 700, most are not following me.
If I want to twitter the entire list, is that doable? Or, do I have to do one, two, three at a time only?
Hi Ken. Unfortunately you can't target a tweet to a Twitter list. Twitter lists are a way for you to segment Twitter accounts on Twitter, but only for the reading of tweets- not sending.
Ian
How many followers can follow me one day on my profile?
As far as I know there is no limit on that, although Twitter may flag your account if they suspect suspicious activity.
Ian
My friend can reply to people retweet and favourite things but she cannot make normal tweets. Can you explain what is happening please? :)
I have been on tweet limit for over a week
Maybe you can answer this simple question. No one else seems to know anything....How many tweets can be sent at one time? (Example) If I had 1000 followers and I sent out a tweet, would all 1000 receive the tweet. Is there a limit in how many tweets can go out at once?
Hi,I have a question. I'm going to reach 3000 followers on Twitter. But when someone follows me (that will make my follower 3000) and then I followed em back,my twitter followers suddenly will turn to 2,101 followers ONLY. And I am currently following 1,896 people. WHY? Please,I hope you can help me. Thank you!
Sorry, Sheilla, I missed your comment. I don't entirely follow what you are saying. If you are following 1,896 people you will only be able to follow that number +10% back. There is no cap on how many people can follow you back. Ian
so this is why the last 2 weeks I lose 47 followers/following? I have to unfollow all political candidates if I wish to get my followers? I had about 1910 following and 1900 followers next day both dropped by 47 followers I gained the same amount the second week and lose 47 again Damn!
You shouldn't lose any followers, it's just that if you reach the limit, you won't be able to follow any more. As for not wanting to unfollow political candidates, I'd advise adding them to a Twitter list. That way, you can follow them in the list without actually following them. That will free you up to follow more people.
We all get people unfollowing us (happens to me all the time), but if you can try and get more followers than people unfollowing you each week you are on to a winner!
for the last 2 weeks I have lost overnight 47 following/followers per week! Do I have to unfollow everybody that doesnt follow me? so I can get new followers? How do they decide who they just cut I wake up and lose 90 followers within the blink of an eye ! Bummed!
For the last two consecutive weekends, I've had EVERY tweet that was favorited by the same specific Twitter account deleted from my Notifications list. This has occurred even though they are still favorited on the same Twitter account's Favorites list! We do follow each other and also DM periodically.
Is anyone aware of there being any cap on how many favorites a Twitter account can receive from another individual Twitter account before Twitter simply wipes them from their Notifications list, as has happened to me twice now? I'd really like to get to the bottom of this, as I do find it a bit frustrating!
Thanks in advance!
That is odd. I assume this account is still accessible and hasn't been suspended?
I'm not aware of a cap on how many favorites your account can give or receive, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is one. Twitter have fairly strict guidelines on automation when it comes to things like this, so it might be that they noticed something odd and removed the favorites.
Do you know how the other account favorited your tweets? Was it manual, or did they use an app? I've heard a number of cases of apps being banned for automation like this and Twitter might then delete activity via the app. Sorry I can't be more helpful. Ian
Great page Ian!
For nearly a year I've been following 500 per day on Twitter using ManageFlitter and also unfollowing anywhere between 200-400 who haven't followed back. As I write, I have about 78.5k followers and I'm following about 77k.
Suddenly ManageFlitter is telling me that 250 new follows per day are being blocked, so I'm only being allowed 250 per day instead of 500 (although I know it should be 1000, but not unless you did it exactly every 24 hours). This has happened for over a week now, everyday.
Other than that, my account is working normally. The only thing I can see that may have changed is that my follower to followers count was closer. It would have been within a few hundred but has slowly stretched out to 1.5k which seemed like a natural progression to me. I'm wondering if for instance when the gap hit 1000, did it trigger a lower limit from Twitter? Any thoughts appreciated!
I'm sure Ian will answer with more info. But I want stI point out that while you are waiting, there's a comment and conversation on this post from back in 2012 or 2013. This issue was addressed back then. You might be getting blocked because you aren't actually supposed to be doing that. It's "frowned upon" to do bulk following/unfollowing for the purpose of getting followers. My guess would be they noticed what you are doing and are trying to discourage it. Clearly it's worked well for you, but maybe look for other ways? I won't follow people who do that, and if other people feel like I do, you might be losing some important followers to it. Good luck though. Twitter is an interesting little place!
Twitter certainly mention the "aggressive follower churn" technique and this is prohibited in their terms and conditions. This is the method to follow a large number of people and then very quickly unfollow them if they don't follow you back. I think the key word here is aggressive. Twitter don't want you to game the system. For me, I am looking for relevant people to follow and engage with. I sometimes will follow hundreds of people in one go, sometimes far less. I certainly don't do this every day. I then keep following them for a month and see if we have things in common, if we engage and if I like their content. If I really like their content, I add them to one of my Twitter lists and to ManageFlitter's "never unfollow" list. That way, I'll never unfollow them. Every so often, I will do a search on ManageFlitter for people who haven't followed me back and aren't included in my "Never Unfollow" list and for whom I followed over 30 days ago. I'll then go through and selectively unfollow them. I hope that makes sense. I think the slow organic approach is best.
I was banned from Twitter in my first two days, back earlier this year. I saw so many people following then unfollowing, and I got blocked after two days of doing it myself. I got a stern message from Twitter - I want to say it was via email, but it may have been a pop up of some sort. I don't believe I was being aggressive, I certainly wasn't even doing as little as the guy above me is doing. The warning made me think I was going to be banned, so I'm very very careful now. I try to only follow relevant people, and I look over their feed before deciding. That helps avoid the weird accounts that seem real but post nothing but spam. I know it sounds like I have a ton of trouble, and at first I definitely got everything wrong. But the warnings have pretty much disappeared as I've learned to use Twitter delicately. Thank goodness.
I really don't like follower churning, aggressive or otherwise. I keep an eye on the people that do it to me, and I make sure not to follow them for any reason. I check the list every few days in crowdfire, and I seem to have a decent memory for names/profile photos. For me, it seems so dishonest to constantly follow/unfollow. It makes someone think I am interested in them, when all I really care about is numbers. Perhaps that means I'm taking Twitter too personally, but my reputation means a lot to me, and I don't want to do anything that makes me look bad. I can understand what you are doing - you are following people for a purpose, not harassing everyone you can find. That wouldn't stop me from following you. But I don't want to interact with people who don't have any interest in art, so I don't indiscriminately follow. People like you, though, are clear exceptions to my personal rules. If someone has a blog, a business, an account etc that I find interesting, of course I follow even if it isn't related to art. But overall, while I use Twitter for promotion, I also want to make sure my feed is interesting to me, just as I try very hard to only retweet quality stuff. If I'm spending so much time on the site, it ought to be worth my while and filled with interesting information! :)
And sorry for typos. Mobile safari doesn't like this comment form at all. It shows my cursor somewhere else entirely and it's hard to type, let alone edit all the mistakes it's causing!
Hi Tim, sorry for the delay, I was speaking at a conference and it got a bit madly busy!
It sounds like you have a good number of followers there! 500 per day is still quite a lot, but as you say the limit is said to be 1,000. However, I will assume that is spread across a 24 hour period and that there are lower limits per hour period. Twitter don't mention this, but they have limits for the number of Tweets you can send out per half hour. I've noticed I've hit limits when using ManageFlitter too, so I try and only follow 200-300 at one time, and then follow some more later. However, I don't do this every day, and I try and keep it to under 500.
I don't think it's anything to do with the gap between friends and followers, but in truth it is difficult to know. We have the Twitter limits that they publish and then there are the "dark limits" that only people at Twitter know about- and some of these are set by algorithms and so change regularly.
I think once you reach a certain number of followers, you shouldn't try and catch up with them. I don't adopt a follow back approach, because I want to keep the people I follow as engaged as possible. I also use Twitter lists a lot.
Hope all that makes sense!
Hi Ian, thanks for replying. And thanks also for your input Q Willis.
I think you're right that I've just been caught out with the “aggressive follower churn” thing. It's interesting that they took so long to 'catch' me, so I do wonder if something else happened. Perhaps I was blocked once too often or something, though I have no evidence of this.
For the record, I'm no spammer or anything and use Twitter in a legitimate way. My follow method worked very well for what I wanted to achieve and now I'll just need to change direction a little. It seems I'm currently being allowed to follow no more than 130 per day - another number with no meaning!
Is there a limit on how many people you can block? And if there is, and you exceed the limit, does it unblock your oldest blocked user?
Unfortunately, the honest answer is, I don't know, but I am very confident in saying there is no limit in the same way there is no limit to how many people can follow you on Twitter. There might be variable limits on how many people you can block at one time, but since Twitter now allow you to export and import block lists I'm not entirely confident on that. In any case, Twitter won't unblock a user unless you unblock them yourself.
Great article Ian, however, my experience with Twitter has been somewhat different.
My account is small (~ 93 followers, following about 139). However, whenever I attempt to follow back more than 4-5 people who have followed me Twitter blocks my account for 'suspicious behaviour'. I then have to go through the tedious process of unblocking my account for behaviour that I don't believe should be suspicious given the amount of activity.
This seems inconsistent with Twitter's stated policies. Do you think my situation is an anomaly? I'd appreciate your thoughts!
Thanks,
Yasmin
Hi Yasmin,
Thanks for your comment. Twitter have automated algorithms to spot "suspicious" behaviour. I've had one account in the past temporarily suspended and managed to get this resolved. Is your account being suspended each time? Have you connected with any 3rd party apps which are compromising your account? Check your Twitter settings. Also, does this happen only one internet connection? Do you share this with other people? I know Twitter log IPs. Ian
Hi Ian, Thanks very much for taking the time to respond. I've been cautious about following back and tend to follow back two or three accounts at a time which isn't an issue since my account is relatively small at the moment. Since I've started doing that I haven't had any issues but I don't always have time to go back and follow ... and it's more efficient to just follow back everyone at one time (not that I have a lot of followers right now but you know what I mean) :) The third party apps attached to my account are feedly, hootsuite, TweetChat (by oneQube), Twitter for Android, TweetDeck and Buffer.
I only follow back on my laptop so its the same internet connection and IP address. I'm the only person accessing this account.
I'll appreciate any advice/guidance you can provide!
Thank you!
Yasmin
I have a similar problem. I apparently followed too many too quickly during my campaign to help end the dolphin massacres in Taiji Japan and now get the message: "You are unable to follow more people at this time" whenever I attempt to follow someone. The problem started about 20 hours ago. What is the process I need to follow (no pun intended) to fix this? Do I do something to fix it or does the problem last for a set amount of time and clear up on it's own? Thank you in advance.
Hi Mark. How frustrating. Has this been resolved yet? The automated Twitter systems have flagged your account as following too many people. The problem is, that this was automated and sometimes these get things wrong. Hopefully, your account is back to normal. If not, you'll need to contact Twitter support. Unfortunately, they're not good at responding. I wish I had some better help! Ian
Ian lately I am getting error messages about DMs and cannot find any information whatsoever on this. We have a group DM of 4 people going, sharing links and photos as we don't want it shared with everyone. After awhile it will cut me off from posting photos, even links and just lets me type messages. Any idea what this is? Thanks in advance. To solve the problem we have been deleting and starting a new DM thinking that it may be the size of the combined content. It's only happened to two of us, the error message.
That's odd. Unfortunately I don't know the answer. It sounds like it's one of those mysterious limits that Twitter don't talk about. It's probably a limit set by an algorithm.
Sorry I can't help any further. Ian
I appreciate your time, though, thank you! A Twitter oddity for certain!
Can we create more than two accounts with different google email accounts?
I tried doing so but it keep asking for my number.. how do i skip from giving my number. Please advice.
Thanks!!
That's a really good question, James. I am surprised you are being asked to give a number. I manage over 40 Twitter accounts and I've not experienced this. Have you verified your email address for the 2nd account? One tip is to use the same GMail account by adding extra characters before the @ symbol with a + at the start. So, if your GMail address is [email protected] you could give the first Twitter account the email address [email protected] and the 2nd one [email protected]. GMail ignores anything after the + and before the @. Hope that makes sense!
Greetings,
Hi there,
Why I can not delete my tweets? I've deleted them up to 3K... And I would like to delete more... After that, I cannot view the rest remainder of my super super years of tweets. Why?
Waiting for the reply.
Twitter did have a limit of viewing your previous 3200 tweets. However they should have extended this. Is this not the case for you? You certainly should be able to view and delete them.
Have you tried to download your archive? Twitter allow you to download all your Tweets as an offline copy. That might allow you to get the links to the Tweets and be able to delete the ones you want to delete.
Ian
Hi. My tweets cannot be seen in other people's mentions. why is that so? it happened on sunday night but came back to normal on monday but the problem occured again and people can only see my tweets to them in their mentions only after 24 hours. now the problem is still on going. help!
Did you post something repeating and repeating? If so your problem just like you're spamming.
but idk the solution of this problem you might just need to look it up.
Hi
I am trying to import my gmail contact on twitter.231 people are present on twitter but when i click on follow all it gives me the following message.
There was an error following your contacts. and when i go to home i can see myself following 100 people.
In my knowledge i can follow upto 2000 people but why it it throwing this error.
I have always had this same problem, I have never been able to use the "follow all" after importing contacts, it has never worked unled I go through the contacts one by one and select smaller groups of people to follow at a time. It's immensely time consuming and irritating, especially if you're using Twitter for work and just trying to build a follower base for you organization and care less about who exactly you're following.
Hi
I am not able to tweet, follow, DM, favorite and my tweets are not visible to others when searched on twitter.
Though others are able to follow me, mention me and DM me.
When i try to tweet i am getting the following message:
"This request looks like it might be automated. To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we can't complete this action right now. Please try again later."
Please help me to bring my twitter account to normal.
Thanks
Sorry I didn't get to reply until now. Is this still the case for you? It sounds like your Twitter account has been suspended. It's best to contact Twitter to ask about this.
For more information check here - https://support.twitter.com/articles/15790 Ian
If there are limits how do certain people get around it? Like Kanye West (or any celebrity), the rich and the famous who have millions of followers? What about someone who wants to utilize Twitter to BECOME famous? And why does Twitter dump your followers even when you aren't violating their rules? At one point I had over 900 followers, then I loofged in and only had 16 - what is that all about?
Some people buy followers. I can't speak for any celeb in particular, but there are plenty of cases of celebs buying followers from the likes of Fiverr.com. These accounts are usually inactive or even spam accounts and are just bought to make the celeb look good. It goes against Twitter's terms of service and you're not going to get any engagement from them. It is something to be avoided.
The best way to grow your number of followers is to make sure you are providing value and you follow people who are likely to follow you back.
Did Twitter remove legitimate followers from your account? What happened?
how many times can we post the same repeating pictures until it spam????
Hi Norch. Can you be more specific? Do you mean tweet the same image out multiple times? Twitter don't publish any limits for this, but you are likely to have your account flagged as spam by other users if you post the same content lots of times in a row. Twitter also have systems in place to monitor usage and if they spot the same Tweet being posted out or the same image it'll likely flag you.
Ian
Is there any limit on blocking?. I got too many fake followers so I'm trying block them all. Just want to know if there is any limit on the blocking.
Really good question. I just wish I had a good answer for you. From what I know there are no published limits on the number of blocks. My feeling is to spread the load over a few days, but I've blocked several hundred over an hour. I do remember getting a message to say I couldn't block any more- so Twitter will notify you. I also run an automated script on another account to automatically block accounts who spam mention me. I've never had any issues with that.
What do you think Is it ok to tag unknown people and organizations in an irrelevant photo ? Because I guess I was attempting to do it here.
I suppose I would ask what your thinking was. I think too many people abuse photo tagging in Twitter. It can be used wisely- but you need to be careful. It could just annoy people and you might find yourself getting blocked.
Ian
Are my tweets also deleted in my friends' account if his/her twitter account was suspended ? For example I tweeted him/her 50 times, then if his/her account was suspended, would my 50 tweets on him/her also be deleted automatically and cannot be seen in my account ?
waiting for your response . Thank you :)
Hi Jem. No, your tweets will still remain including ones where you mentioned your friend. If their account has been suspended then clicking on their screen name in your Tweets will link through their profile which will say that the account in question has been suspended.
Ian
Is there a limit to the number of tweets I can like on an individual account? How do I get rid of liked tweets because not all showmup when I open the tab?
Great question, unfortunately as far as I know, Twitter don't publish any limits on the number of likes. I think there will be a hard limit, but I don't know what that will be. It may be a flexible limit depending on your activity.
Ian
My account shows 107 likes in the top bar but none in the tab. Can't figure out why and would like to delete all my likes. Is this possible?
So when you look at your Twitter likes you can't see them? That's odd. You should be able to click on the "Likes" tab in your Twitter profile and view all your likes there- and then delete them all - one by one. If you've only liked 107 Tweets that's not a massive amount of work. I'm not sure if there are any apps that do this automatically or in bulk for you. Ian
Is there a limit on the number of contacts that twitter can process when attempting a contact upload? I just established a new twitter account for the program that I manage, and I've tried everything I can think of to import the contacts from my work gmail (there are about 15,000 contacts) to look for folks to follow (I created a non-organizational gmail and imported the contacts... I created a yahoo email... I tried every web browser on my computer), and no matter what I do I get an error message when trying to import the contacts into Twitter. But if I try to use my personal gmail, which has more like 3,000 contacts, it works just fine.
Hi Tim, how annoying! I wish I knew, but Twitter don't publish limits on this. I'm pretty sure they will have limits though- and 15,000 sounds like a lot of contacts for them to deal with. The only work around is trying to do it in batches- just by creating 5 GMail accounts each with 3,000 contacts and adding them that way. A real pain, but I can't think of another solution. Ian
I have been following 1,000 and unfollowing750 per day with mangeflitter for 4 months with abt 30k followers now. NO problems or warnings from Twitter. I follow for 7ndays before unfollowing.
Does not get notifications for my followers if i do like or rt or mention in my twitter, this happen with my all followers, iam sure they did not blocked me,
Thank you! This was very informative as I am looking at building my Twitter account. I really appreciate the in-depth analysis of how Twitter monitors these things, and how they can impact my account.
Thank you for the informative words, Ian.
A pleasure, Ron! :-) Ian
Hi Ian,
Very informative article. Just a quick one - We have around 12k followers and I want to send a personalised DM inviting them to support our campaign. Is it safe to use a twitter merge google doc? How many DMs will I be able to send in a day, is it a 1000? Does twitter penalize for mass DMs? I don't want my company account to be suspended... :(
Any inputs would be highly appreciated... Rajni
Hi Rajni, thanks for your comment and apologies for being slow in replying.
I've just got back from a conference.
You may not want me to say this, but I really advise against sending automated DMs - even if they are personalised. Evidence shows that your unfollow rate could increase by up to 235% if you send automated DMs. My inbox is awash with auto-DMs and it is pretty much unusable. Although I don't unfollow people who send them, I know many people that do. Just be careful!
As for whether Twitter will suspend you, that's a difficult question.
Twitter give a limit of 250 direct messages per day. That's the max limit, but they may well have lower limits per 15 minute window. For example they may suspend you if you send a certain number in just one hour. If you're going to send multiple direct messages, space out the sending throughout the day- and I'd recommend sending out quite a bit fewer than 250.
If you are using an app to do this, hopefully they will allow you to schedule it. You could also build your own app with the Twitter API and have more control over it.
Hope that helps.
Ian
Hi Ian, thanks for posting very informative article. You have well described different types of limits of Twitter. Some times I am not getting a notification from my followers when they are re-tweet my tweet or they liked my tweet. Another question is, there is any limit for following people per day?
The upper limit you can follow per day is 1,000 - but you'd never actually want to do this. There are also smaller limits for each hour of the day so, you can't just follow lots all in one go.
You should receive notifications from your followers, but you may not receive email notifications for all of these. Twitter tries to send cut down on the number of emails it sends and so won't send you all notifications if you get a lot. There are work arounds to this using other tools, but it's a bit more complicated.
Hi, Ian
Thanks for your reply. Your answer is very helpful for me.
I am unable to Tweet or Retweet because I "followed too many people too quickly and I might be a bot". Which is absurd. I followed approximately 38 people in about 4 minutes before I was cut off and no longer to do anything except "like" stuff. Is there a time frame when I can actually tweet, follow, update my bio or retweet again? I am NEW to twitter (about a month or so) and am just locating new Berners to follow. So...I'm lost here. Totally freaking lost.
I must add, that I verified with Twitter that my account was NOT suspended or revoked, but they wouldn't give me any other information. I'm having this problem on Mobile & Laptop. Can't do anything ... and yes, great article. I'm glad I found it before I made an unforgivable mistake. Lol
Oh dear, that is so annoying. Twitter have hard limits (as stated in this article) and flexible "soft" limits which are determined by algorithms they have running in the background. It sounds like you got caught by one of these. Obviously it was being over-zealous and thought you were a bot! I mean how dare you follow 38 people in 4 minutes! ;-) That is silly. Many people follow more than that on a daily basis and never have any issues. The other thing I would say is that there are lower follow limits in every hour (or possibly in every 15 min period) so don't follow all at once. It is best to do it in batches - follow some now, and then wait for an hour or so. Hope you get sorted. Ian
hi ! may i know the maximum amount you can turn on notifications for ?
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I don't quite follow you. Maximum amount of what? I'm not sure there is a limit for notifications, unless you mean the number of email notifications which unfortunately Twitter filters when you get to a certain number per hour.
Hi
Why can not more than a specified number of days, I liked tweets? Like there any restrictions?
There aren't any restrictions here that I know of. However, the Twitter website sometimes decides to stop delivering Tweets if you keep on scrolling down the page. They do exist, but you may want to try Twitter advanced search to see if that gives you what you want.
Why i am reciving half massege form 40404, Every massege is unclear, please help me out.... .
Sorry, I don't quite understand. You could explain again?
Hii
I have a problem since 4 to 5 days that it shows "cannot retweet status" & I am unable to follow new people.
I have following only 535 .. Then ow come i reached the following limit ??
What to do now
That's weird. It sounds like Twitter's algorithm has flagged something and temporarily locked your site down. Have you tried logging out and back into Twitter? I wonder if your account has been suspended or restricted in some way?
Hello. I use Twitter Fast Follow to receive text message notifications of tweets when they are posted. I used to get the full tweet plus a short link URL to the original tweet in the text message. Recently the text message has truncated the tweet to the first 50 characters and no longer includes a link to the original Tweet which makes it pretty useless! Did Twitter change something here? Is there something that needs to be changed on the original Twitter account to make Fast Follow work like it used to?
Thanks for your comment, Olivia. Twitter may have made some changes. I've not noticed anything myself (I developed my own Twitter app and everything seems to be working ok). Have you contacted Twitter Fast Follow? It sounds like they need to make an update or fix a bug. Twitter do now not count urls and screen names in their 140 character count.
Thanks Ian. I tried to search on Twitter to report a problem but I only see an option to report violations. Is there a link that you know of to report a bug?
I'm so sorry, Olivia. I misread what you had said - basically, because I've never used Twitter's Fast Follow service before. I still think you may need to contact them, but contacting Twitter is a bit difficult. However, they have a list of contact forms here which you may find helpful - https://support.twitter.com/forms Hope that helps! Ian
Thanks Ian. Good to know. Hard keeping up with all this social media buzz. Especially at 87.
Thanks, Kim. That's great to hear. It's all such a fast paced world, no matter how old you are! You're doing a terrific job, I'm sure! :-)
I keep receiving warnings about suspected unusual activity and suspend from account until I change the password every time I follow around 100 people/day even if I do it with rate of 20-30 per hour. I do not use any automated method for following. Is there any following new limit that I was not aware? I have around 7K followers and following around 5000 people. Thanks
i think so, because when i follow 20 people in 5 minutes. they block my account .then i have to confirm through email or phone
John, something very odd is happening then. What's your Twitter account and I'll have a look? Ian
Hi, Daniel and John. There are hard limits and soft limits which are enforced by algorithms. The limits I've included in this article are the hard limits announced by Twitter. However, in a bid to curb spammers and scammers, Twitter use algorithms to try and detect "unusual activity". We can't know exactly how they work - only Twitter knows that. Most of the time these algorithms do a pretty good job. However, sometimes they get it wrong. I don't use any automated following methods and I've been ok for the most part. However, I did have another one of my Twitter accounts suspended by mistake. I contacted Twitter and after a week they sorted it out. I can't really give you any recommendations except do have a look through all the 3rd party apps you've given access to, by going to your Twitter settings and then apps. Have a look through the list and revoke access to any apps you don't recognise. Perhaps an app you gave access to is doing bad things!
Hi Ian, Quick question. I have a twitter account which I created for personal use and then eventually I used it for marketing for the companies I worked with. My question is: Why is it my followers are not growing? Everyday I am receiving a notifications that there are people who are following me, yet it's not showing. My followers got stuck with 800 something. Any idea? Also, I installed before an app with my previous company, however, I forgot the tool I used, until now everytime my previous company are updating, it automatically posted on my twitter account. I wanted to remove it but I couldn't remember the tool. Anyway, here is my twitter account for your reference, please take a look and I hope you could give me some light. @h20mysticshadow
Regards,
Daisy from Qatar
Hi Daisy, not sure what the issue is. You now have 864 followers. It went up by one when I followed you. so it is definitely working. In order to stop access to the app, you need to go to your Twitter settings and then select Apps. Go through any apps you don't want and revoke access. Hope that helps! Ian
Hi Ian,
I'm having the same problem. I get notifications that people are following I should have over 650 by now but the followed number keeps dropping. My twitter page is @_CarliPalmer_ . By any chance do you know why this is happening?
Carli
It could be that people are following you and then very shortly afterwards unfollowing you. You get notified by Twitter that people follow you, but you don't get notified when people unfollow you. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who still adopt the aggressive follower churn technique that Twitter outlaws. This is where people follow lots of people, wait a short while, and then unfollow everyone who doesn't follow them back. Check Twitter Analytics to see what is happening - https://analytics.twitter.com - look at your followers graph.
I'd also clean up the number of people you follow. You're following almost 4 times as many people as follow you. Move people into Twitter lists and then unfollow them. Then be patient. Follow people slowly and hopefully your followers will increase. I recommend checking out the tool ManageFlitter.
Thanks Ian!
Thank you, Ian, and sorry for delayed reply. Maybe people are following me and then when I followed them back, they unfollowed me that is why my followers got stuck. Have a lovely day.
Kind Regards,
Daisy
Hi Ian thanks for this post.
Im new to twitter so still getting the hang of the rules. Im trying to gain an income through affiliate marketing. I post a link about every hour or so using different hashtags (that feel are relevant to what Im promoting) I dont want to spam.
I haven't had any problems yet.
I also tweet other blogs that I read, my personal blog and some non linked updates but most of my tweets relate to my affiliate link.
Do you h ave any tips? Am I spamming? Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Hi Allie. As long as you are giving value with your Tweets then I think you should be ok. It's important to vary your Tweets. Share other people's posts, share personal and business stuff too- be human as well as posting your affiliate links. Make sure you engage with others too. People are far more likely to engage and click on your links if you do all these things. Hope that helps. Ian
Thanks Ian. I appreciate the help. It makes sense.
Hi Ian, Do you know of a social media "deck" that does more than 350 schedule messages at once, I use and love Hootsuite, but, I actually need to send a lot of messages out per month, we're a podcast and I want to send out our schedule of programming automatically. Unfortunately 350 is too little of an amount! Thanks in advance!
Thanks. Great question. I would have recommended Buffer, but they've now put a cap on the number of posts you can schedule. It's currently 100 on their individual plan. I personally love Agorapulse, and I am not aware of a limit on scheduled posts. You could also check out Social Champ - https://socialchamp.io which is a bit like Buffer.
Hi
I only made 5 tweets and my account got blocked. Not able to unblock it till now even after email and phone number confirmation.
Uggh, how frustrating. Have you managed to get it unblocked yet? Have you tried this at a different location? Sometimes Twitter takes the IP address of your location into account when blocking. For example, there is a limit to how many people can create a Twitter account in one location (as a friend of mine found up while she was giving a workshop to Twitter beginners!).
what ?! i just joined twitter will i get banned too for silly reasons so quickly?
I wish they would block mine.They should tell you that you can't unsubscrib from your smartphone.I learned my lesson by just signing into a hipster site to make a comment
Hi!
Since the beginning of November I have not been able to tag people in my photos in tweets - I can choose them, but after publishing the tweet all of them disappear. Do you know what is a problem?
Thats exactly whats happening to me right now. We have a news digital web account and we cant tag people in photos. We tried everything but no solution.
Sorry to hear this Mark and Ramiro. I haven't come across this bug before and I've not found anything form searching the web. You could try and contact Twitter support at https://twitter.com/Support/ although they're very bad at replying.
Can someone follow you for their own agenda then mute you as not to get ur tweets so their page can stay clean with their politics?I blocked them and follow people in philosophy &Judaism and keep it clean
When I click on someone's followers list only a small fraction show up. For example this person's page says they have 800 followers but when I click on "followers" only 23 people show up in the list. There is the little tweety bird at the bottom so I know I have reached the end. How do they do that?
Hi Stacy. That is very strange. I assume this is on the Twitter website? Have you tried the mobile app and see if you get the same?
I had trouble retweeting as I think the Twitter algorithm banned me from doing so because of my hashtag campaign on an issue. Now I found a way around it by using twitter URL's in bit.ly and it worked briefly. Now I can't send any URL or retweet and can only send normal tweets, ones with hashtags and pictures!! If I try, none of my retweets or tweets with URL's appear under #hashtags, but my other regular tweets instantly do appear. Arrrggggh. Know any solution, please? Cheers
Flag this message Delete this message
Hi Ted, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I am surprised that Twitter would have banned you from hashtag usage. Can you explain what you did? It sounds very odd. When you are doing your hashtag search, are you showing all results and not just top results?
What about abuse of hashtags? can anyone help me on that.... I want to start promoting my site, but I don't wanna get banned/suspended
I don't think there is a limit on the number of hashtags you can use. However, I'd recommend not going mad - just because too mang hashtags can be offputting to your audience. I would say 2 or 3 hashtags per Tweet is optimum. On Instagram, however, you can go mad. The more hashtags on Instagram, the better!
Hi there, when ever I try to like a tweet, the heart will go red but immediately go back, 'unliked' as it were. It's happened a few times off and on but always seems to correct. I've changed passwords, etc but wonder if I'm not hitting a limit. I can't find any info. Thank you
same here! it's been doing this for about a day on my phone and computer. i don't know how to fix it :( helppppp
Weird, sorry to hear that, Amber. Can you check that your account is in full working order? I assume you've not been sent an email from Twitter saying your account has been suspended? Other than that, then perhaps you have reached a limit. I'm not aware of a like limit, but Twitter do have hard limits internally as well as limits that change for different users - these are unfortunately set by algorithms which sometimes get it wrong. And unfortunately Twitter support aren't great at getting back to you. I do have one contact that I'll try and ask, but I am not overly confident I'll get a response!
This happens to me even with low useage. Sometimes the first or third like. Unlike they just don’t want me to read Twitter without necessarily posting every day, I think it’s unlikely to be related to a usage algorithm.
Great post. How do marketing companies overcome these limits? For example, for the 2400 Twitter notification limit per day, is there a way to buy additional notification capability from Twitter?
Really interesting question, Partha. Unfortunately you can't break through these limits, not even if you offer Twitter money!
Can you update on this ?
Can a verified account holder on Twitter see or read his private mentions sent by a protected account ?
Can a verified account holder see my tweets if I tweet them with a protected twitter account, without following me ?
No. If you've protected your Twitter account, only the people you have accepted to follow you can see your Tweets.
Thank you for replying. Yes, I know that we can see protected tweets only if we're following each other. I just thought may be verified accounts have some special features ? And may be they can see their protected mentions too ?
I understand. I think some verified users have extra filters in Twitter, but that's it. There would be outcry if verified users could see other people's protected Tweets. It's definitely not the case that they can see them if they don't follow you. Ian
Thank you Ian
Then what about all those fans and people who tweet celebrities with their protected accounts ? Simply waste of time ?
You mean, if the celebs have protected accounts?
Well, it's kind of pointless, in that the only people who would see these retweets are the people who also follow that celeb.
Useful article
Apparently we've reached some kind of following ceiling with only about 200. I created support tickct but only go an email that says"Your account appears to have exhibited automated behavior that violates the Twitter Rules" and that I should see a prompt letting me know my acct is locked and to click start. But i don't see any of that. I can see my profile but can't do anything, follow back, tweet, etc.I can't even tweet to Twitter support. Is this temporary? If so how long would it last? How can you build your account without following people you like. I'd appreciate any suggestions.
Hi Angela, That's odd. Your account may have been flagged for violating the automated behavior rules. Twitter uses algorithms to try and determine whether accounts are using spammy behavior. This could include automated following/unfollowing or liking. The problem is that it gets this wrong, and many people that do adopt this behavior seem to be getting away with it. If you can log into your account, go to settings and go to Apps and see which apps you've given access to your account. Revoke access to any accounts you don't recommend or could be violating this behavior. I'd also change your password. Hopefully, Twitter will reverse their decision. I'd also try and contact them again. They're not great at responding but they eventually do, at least in my experience.
Whenever I try to like a tweet, the button turns red and then reverts back to its greyish colour. What could be the problem?
Hi Kelvin, sorry to hear this problem you're having. It sounds like Twitter have imposed a limit on your account. Has your account been suspended or have you received any messages when you log in or via email? Best to check.
Or just wait and see if the limit is lifted.
I am having the same problem. Did it start working on its own? How long was it not working?
I'd love to know whether the issue resolved itself. I've not seen this issue myself. Let me know if it does start working again.
I've had the problem of "disappearing likes" several times. It fixes itself by the next day- never sooner. I can't track exact time but this is definitely a problem. I've requested Twitter support 4-5x and never got a response. Wish I knew why this was happening!
Hi. Thanks for writing and maintaining this useful article.
Twitter's docs list the DM limit as 1000 per day.
https://support.twitter.com/articles/15364
Is there a reason you're listing it as 250?
Hope you can clarify.
Best regards.
Thanks for this, Hugo. Well spotted. Twitter have updated the max number of DMs from 250 to 1,000. I have updated the article accordingly. I just wish they had a better UI for direct messages and had some filtering because I still get a lot of spammy DMs!
Hi Ian!
How come when I follow someone on twitter, I look at their page the next day and it says I'm not following them anymore?
I haven't hit a following limit.
Hi Luss, that's weird! Does this happen regularly? Is this with one person, or does it happen with a few people you follow? I assume this isn't happening to you, but if the other person blocks you, then Twitter will unfollow them from you. It's unlikely, but it could be a tool that is doing the unfollowing for you. Do you have any 3rd party tools that have access to your Twitter account? Other than that, there has been what is known as the "Twitter Unfollow Bug" which some people have suffered from. Twitter have never admitted this, but sometimes it appears that certain people are unfollowed for no reason. I'd just keep an eye on it. Let us know if you find anything out.
Many thanks for the reply. It is happening with large number of people and I found out that it is the “Twitter Unfollow Bug”.
Hi Ian
when i follow someone he not get notification that i followed him what can i do ?
kindly help me.
This is actually happening to me as well suddenly. Something got changed.
so how i fix it ?
The other person needs to have notifications for new people following them switched on in their settings. However, Twitter sometimes tries to be "helpful" and reduce the number of emails it sends out and so they may not receive that notification. That shouldn't stop them receiving a notification in the Twitter app though. If so, it may be a temporary glitch.
Yeah thats been glitching out a bit. if you go to your followers it will list them in order of following. so if they want to follow everyone back and not miss some. which are getting left out in the notifications.
Yes, Twitter (and actually most networks) don't send out notifications for everything. I find this frustrating, because I want email notifications on for everything since I use my GMail account for my central repository. I did build an app called Twools which you can connect with IFTTT to help with this, but it's a bit geeky. Ian
It’s possible to turn off notifications for accounts that are new, don’t have a verified email, don’t have a verified phone, have a default profile photo, or that the other account doesn’t follow or who doesn’t follow the other account, or appear to be spam (automated messages, for instance).
So the things you can correct are to verify at least one form of contact, make sure you have a profile photo that gives information about you (doesn’t have to be a photo of yourself although they claim this is better, but another graphic of some kind is also fine), and be sure your content is relevant and doesn’t come across as spam (either to users or to Twitter bots). .
You’ve probably solved this part by now, but for folks new to Twitter, be sure to follow some relevant accounts.
Hi, can I ask? An year ago I have been make the first twitter account. And I use my telephone number, I am silly, I just forget the password. So I decide to create another account. I used my telephone number again. How many times can I the phone number use? I got a ban. I think this is because of the same number. I am sorry if this guestion is stupid. Have a nice day Michelle.
That's a good question! First of all, couldn't you reset the password of your original Twitter account?
As for how many times you can use the same phone number across different Twitter accounts, I really don't know. I wouldn't have thought there was a limit. You shouldn't have been banned because of that. I have 2 or 3 Twitter accounts that use the same number. Ian
There is a limit, possibly around 10 or 15.
I have checked Twitter help a while ago and they say we can add the same phone number to 10 accounts.
https://help.help.x.com/en/managing-your-account/phone-number-faqs
Can I add my phone number to multiple accounts?
You can add your phone number to up to 10 accounts. It’s important to note that only the account most recently linked to this phone number can perform SMS commands and receive SMS notifications for account activity like Direct Messages, new followers, Retweets, etc. Any other accounts you have associated with your phone number will not be able to edit Text notifications settings. Each account that has your phone number associated with it will still receive SMS text messages for password reset requests or security features like login verification.
Thanks for that! Really helpful update. Ian
It’s my pleasure Ian.
So Liking a Tweet counts against your 2,400 Tweets per day?
No, that will be a separate limit. Unfortunately, I've not seen anything from Twitter that gives what that limit is.
Hello Ian and everyone else. I think i can help you at this point.
In our business account (since Jan 2014 with verify phone, app, and much more) this limit is between 290 and 310 tweets every two hours.
Respectively, οn my own personal account (since 2008 without verify my phone and anything else) this limit is adjusted to 190 and 210 per two hours.
I hope i helped you.
Thanks so much. That is very helpful.
I think the hourly limit changes from person to person, and may be calculated by an algorithm. I've found I can follow 300-500 people within one hour, although I've only done that very rarely. As for likes, I've never tried to test it - that is basically because I only use the like button a few times per day.
Thanks again for sharing! Ian
It's my pleasure Ian.
Yes and don't forget, these algorithm-limits include actions from all devices, including web, mobile, phone, API, etc.
API requests from all third-party applications are tracked against the hourly API limit. People who use multiple third-party applications with their account will therefore reach the API limit more quickly.
Regards.
That's a great point. Each app has their own limits set within 15 minute windows - https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/rate-limits.html But I think you're right in Twitter's algorithms having a bigger picture and taking everything into account too.
I just opened my first Twitter account and got suspended (locked out) for following 100 people in 1 day, yet the limit is 1,000? I was mainly just following the people I like (friends, celebs, youtubers, etc)...What "should" our daily limit be if I'm getting locked out for 100? I don't want to get in trouble again. Thanks!
Unfortunately, you've been hit by an automated limit by Twitter's algorithm. Although the limits stated in this article are still true, Twitter has algorithms checking for anything unusual. If it spots too much going on, it can flag this and temporarily suspend you. Quite often it gets it wrong which is frustrating. I think when you're new to Twitter, it's best to keep to a much lower limit, to begin with. Maybe follow 10-20 per day, to begin with, and then slowly increase it.
I was recently locked out but could return by providing my phone number.
However, this did not tell me the reason I was suspended.
Is it against Twitter rules to Tweet to just anyone?...I mean, if you are interested in a certain subject....and do a "search" for people with the same interests....is it against Twitter rules to send them information or links based upon your shared interests?
Also, I see in the Twitter "rules" that a person can be locked out if they have been reported as Spamming.....Wouldn't this allow "like minded" people to ban together to remove Tweets which they feel run against their best interests?....say Racist Alt-Right members complaining about Black Liberal accounts.....
Hi Katt, thanks for your comment and sharing your experience. Sounds very frustrating, but glad you got back on Twitter.
One big problem is that Twitter doesn't have the capacity to provide decent customer service. They'll never tell you why you got suspended. I did manage to get a response from them once when my account was incorrectly suspended, but that was only after a lot of digging. For me, my account was incorrectly flagged due to an over-zealous algorithm. It sounds like this can happen from time to time. I think they do take into account, the number of times an account has been flagged as spam, but I think there is some human checking from Twitter here. But, you are right, it is open to abuse and accounts that people disagree with (from which ever standpoint) could be flagged as spam and potentially suspended by Twitter. It's a bit of a nightmare for Twitter - how do they police it?
Something you may want to include is that there appears to be a limit to how many tweets you can favourite/like per day. I went on a liking spree and got hit with an error message saying I had exceeded daily limits at around the 1000 mark. There is definitely a like rate limit (API is defined in docs and for the website not documented).
Hi Peter. Yes, I think you're right. There are lots of hidden limits that Twitter use. The problem is that they are not documented, and the limits change from user to user. That's because they use algorithms to detect what those limits should be - at least this is my understanding. Thanks for
That's interesting. Yesterday I tried doing more likes and less retweeting [relatively new to Twitter] and this morning my account was suspended?
Really annoying when that happens. Twitter has algorithms that try and work out whether accounts are doing things that go against their terms and conditions. Because they are programs, they sometimes get things wrong. It happened to one of my secondary accounts a few years back. Thankfully I got it reversed, but really annoying,
Hi; don't know if you can help or not, but I recently started Unfollowspy and every day they give me a count averaging an addition of 15 followers but 12 - 14 unfollowers, every day. This has held a pattern for three to four weeks, every day. Too long to be coincidence. I've tried to contact unfollowspy.com with no luck. It seems that either Twitter or unfollowspy.c is removing followers to average out accounts I pick up each day so I never grow past where I am which is right at 2150.
What do I do?
Thanks so much!
Hi Rebecca, I haven't tried Unfollow Spy myself. I am always wary about these tools.
According to their website, they...
But I would hope that was a manual process - i.e. where you choose who you want to unfollow.
Twitter, in fact, ban tools from automatically following and unfollowing.
It goes against their terms. It doesn't stop tools from offering it, but they shouldn't do it.
I'd try and contact them again, and if they don't get back to you, remove it from your Twitter apps.
You could look at unfollowing more yourself, and start following them in a Twitter list. It's good to have more followers then people you follow in order to increase your followers.
Hope that helps.
Hi i dont know if you can help me but my acc was lock and i unlocked it using my code but i cant follow anyone i dont know why please help me
Hi Noli. That is very frustrating. Are you receiving any error messages when you try and follow people? Have you tried doing this on the desktop version of twitter.com? Also check to see if your account has been suspended - as that might account for the restrictions. You can apply to Twitter to get it unsuspended when you see the message.
Twitter ban? For following and unfollowing aggressively? Not really. You get a time out. A seat on the naughty step. It just means until the time at which you fall below the limit, you can't add any more. If you spend an hour adding 1000 followers, it'll be 23 hours before you can add one more and it will be the full 24 hours before you can add another 1000. You can trigger speed restrictions by following and unfollowing too fast, but just slow your chrome extension or whatever you use down. Make it do one follow/unfollow per second and leave it run overnight. Personally I prefer automated bots that you can set up to do it through the day for you. So if someone says #Mercedes and you sell car parts for those cars, you give them an automated follow. Then have another bot that deletes anyone who hasn't followed you back in 3 days clearing up behind it. Then forget about it forever. But don't knicker wet over "being banned by twitter". It doesn't happen. They only ever time you out or lock your account. You never get banned. It isn't in their interest. The very fact you are going to this effort shows you are one of the few that actually cares about their platform. Most accounts are dormant or bot created. The last thing they want is to remove active humans, even if they are using tools.
Thanks for your comment. What you say makes sense. It's probably best not use the word "banned" but you can definitely get your account suspended. I had an account suspended due to "suspicious behaviour" and it took 2 weeks to have this suspension reversed. Twitter's algorithms can detect this unusual behaviour (when using automation) and can suspend you. Of course (and this was my situation) it can get it wrong. While Twitter may not ban you completely or delete your account- you can get suspended, which means your account will appear protected) and that isn't good.
Hi, my account just got locked thrice in a row and I don't know why because I did not violate any twitter rules! The first time and second time, I was locked out after I liked a tweet of someone trying to pacify a hater comment. The third time I got locked out while I was scrolling down twitter support to ask about why I got locked out. Now it says that I've exceeded the amount of time I can verify my phone number and to "try later". Do you know how late that would be? It's already been a day! I have around 8 followers and follow less than 20 accounts.
Sorry for not replying until now. That's odd. I've not heard of a limit to the number of times you can verify your phone number. I'm not sure what to recommend at this stage but I hope after a few more days it will sort itself out.
Hi, Ian
Must say great and the way you presented it is remarkable. Thanks for sharing such an informative post, keep sharing.
I have been messaging a person since June last year and haven't deleted the messages at all. last week i thought the person flagged my dm. He said he hasn't. And sent me the screenshot of his dm inbox. then why can't I dm him anymore?
That's odd. He could have changed his settings. Is he following you? I assume he hasn't blocked you? You can change the settings to only be able to receive DMs from people you follow.
What I find annoying is when somebody suggests you follow X person [because you have similar interests or whatever ] [plus Twitter GIVES you suggestions about who to follow] and then when you do, and add them to a list e.g. writers, creatives, bloggers, then they disappear for some unaccountable reason and then you bump into them again and go through the whole rigamarole again. Confused.
Hi Madeline, sorry I didn't respond to this last month. That is really weird. So, have you found that, although you did follow them, you find out that you are no longer following them later on? Is this also the same with the list? Are they removed from your list too? I haven't found this myself, but there was something called the "unfollow bug" a few years back. I couldn't work out whether it was actually a bug but something weird was going on.
I similarly lose some people I thought I was following and then I don’t know if I just listed them and didn’t actually follow, or someone else’s “likes” and RTs were putting them in my timeline so I thought I was on follow but wasn’t actually, or I was following and they blocked and then unblocked me to remove my follow, or if there was a glitch.
very useful information.
Glad it is helping someone!
Cheers Maddy
Madeline McEwen:-
“I have spent most of the day putting in a comma, and the rest of the day taking it out.” Oscar Wilde
Hello again, Ian. Just thought I'd update you in case it helps your research and others. I mentioned earlier today that my Twitter account was suspended and I had no idea why. I read through a big chunk of the comments here mining for answers. Lots of good pointers and tips by the way! However, the important thing for me [and maybe other folks] was that I received a return email today from Twitter which reads as follows:-
"Twitter Hello,
Your account is now unlocked, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.
Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules).
Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not respond to this email as replies will not be monitored.
Thanks,
Twitter Support"
So there you go. None the wiser. However, that was less than 24 hours to recovery which may be some comfort to some.
Best wishes
Maddy
Thanks for the update. Yes, Twitter's spam algorithms can be a little overzealous sometimes. But great to know they are taking responsibility this time and admitted that yours got caught up in the mix. Glad they got back to it quickly. The last time this happened was to another account and I had to wait around 12 days!
Addendum - me again, Ian. I checked my account and a big chunk of my followers have disappeared ... maybe they were the "spoiler" accounts. However in addition, I appear to be following nobody at all. Hoping normal service will be returned tomorrow. Luckily I maintain a lot of lists [they're a bit chaotic] but I should be able to track most of them down!
Interesting. They could be spammy accounts that were following you. Twitter may have deleted those accounts. That's a good thing, although it does mean that your follower count goes down. But weird that you're not following anyone. I assume your lists are ok? Has anything come back now?
I am working through sprout social and had a quick question. If I get too many failed tweets due to like content or too many direct retweets does my future tweets or profile become affected? Thank You
Hi Ryan,
Sprout Social uses the official Twitter API (like all social media management tools I know). Sprout won't itself limit what you can do, but if Twitter thinks you are posting too many duplicated tweets or spamming the system, it could limit you or suspend your account. That would mean Sprout wouldn't be able to access the API properly until you contact Twitter.
Sprout would get an error message and would let you know on the screen. As long as you are within the limits set out in this article, you should be fine. But also remember that there are limits within each 15 minute period, so you shouldn't send a day's worth of DMs in an hour, otherwise, you'll have problems.
Hi! Great article! I have a question I can't find the answer to. How come when I scroll thru folks I follow (the link under my profile) using my phone, I can't get to the bottom of the actual list, and it stops scrolling and all I see is simply a tiny grey dot? It's not my phone's memory either as I have a 128 GB pixel 2 xl with over 100 GB free. I've tried everything. Same thing happens with the list of folks following me. Plus, I'm only talking about 1800 folks I follow and about 1500 in total list of those who are following me. Thanks much for the info.
Hi, Yes, this frustrates me too. Twitter is supposed to refresh with new results, but sometimes there is a glitch and you can't scroll back a certain amount. Try it on the desktop and see if that works better. But even so, I've had issues there too. On your phone, you could delete your cache or uninstall Twitter and then install it again.
hello ian!! my account has this message popping everytime i try to follow people "Limit Reached. You are unable to follow accounts at this time." I am aware that i have been aggressively following and u following people, but i just want to as how long it will last.
Hi Macy, this usually only happens for a 24 hour period. But be careful, if Twitter detects that you are aggressively following/unfollowing you, you could have your account suspended. Let me know how you get on. Ian
Please unsubscribe me. I'm getting too many emails in general in my inbox.
Thanks (nothing personal I promise xx)
What about likes? I've been trying to manage my "Likes" page and "manually" deleted several thousand and now I can't see my Likes history? Do you know of the rules there? And I'm not sure why I can't manually remove my likes (un-like prior likes). Thoughts would be much appreciated!
I wanted to delete "Likes" in bulk but couldn't find any online program to do it for thousands of thousand LIKES. So I used copy/paste script { $('.ProfileTweet-action--unfavorite').click(); } in console & deleted many thousands in few hours ! Now I cant use "LIKE" option for new tweets by others as the message " Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again." is coming up whenever I hit LIKE option
What should I do now ?
Thank you
Did you ever get this figured out? I've been rate limited like this like 10 times over the past couple of days now, and I'm not even using a script. I'm just manually unliking everything in my list.
Sorry to hear that. To be honest I don't know. I do know that there are a number of limits set by algorithms in the background. There may not be a hard limit, but your account could have been limited. I've reached out to Andy Piper on Twitter to see if he can add any clarification. I'll let you know if he responds. Ian
Twitter has gone beyond just being a social gathering place. It’s achieved what yahoo tried & couldn’t: primary news source for ppl. It has become for news mags, newspapers, tv what Amazon is to brick & mortar stores. Tremendous potential. Q: Will Twitter be able to evolve quickly enough to become a primary business & subscription platform? We’re all anxious to get started...
Hi Susan, I totally agree. Twitter is the primary news source for many.
It's my go to place for breaking news, although it's important to check facts and not take everything at face value. But the problem is that Twitter still doesn't know how to make money. They don't seem to have a strategy. I think it is unlikely that they go down the subscription route because they've (so far) adopted the ad model. You can't really have both - since they cannibalize each other. But who knows? They need to do something, because Twitter is still in a precarious position! Ian
Very useful, thanks! Do you know if there is a limit to the number of tweets that can be scheduled through Tweetdeck? I've scheduled approximately 1000 tweets for a feature I'm planning later this year, but if I attempt any more, I get a "Tweet failed: Rate limit exceeded." message. Twitter itself works fine, I just can't schedule any more. Support haven't responded - any pointers greatly appreciated!
Hi Richard, That's a great question. Unfortunately, I'm not sure. I've never tried to schedule that many Tweets through Tweetdeck. I think there will be a limit, and if you've reached 1,000 and can't add any more, then it seems like that is the limit. The fact that they've not responded to your support question highlights an important issue with using a free tool like Tweetdeck. It's great when it works, but when it goes wrong you really want to be having good support. That's one reason why I switched to a paid social media management tool. I will say, however, that the error message that you're getting is an odd one. That error normally happens when you request too many things from the Twitter API in a 15 min time period. But maybe that is the error message they're giving you when you exceed 1,000 scheduled tweets. Not very helpful!
Hello Ian and everyone else.
Τhrough Tweetdeck there are about the same limits : )
“In our business account (since Jan 2014 with verify phone, app, and much more) this limit is between 290 and 310 tweets every two hours.
Respectively, οn my own personal account (since 2008 without verify my phone and anything else) this limit is adjusted to 190 and 210 per two hours.”
Regards.
Thanks for the update. It makes sense that there are the same limits.
Tweetdeck IS Twitter. But it seems odd that you can't schedule more. Ian
Hi Ian - just to follow up on this, I can confirm that once the scheduled tweets began to post, I was then able to schedule more tweets using Tweetdeck - suggests indeed that there must be a limit of around 1000 tweets that can be scheduled at a time. Thanks!
Thanks for letting me know, Richard. That makes sense!
I have email notifications turned on for direct messages. It seems I only the get the first 50 (there are more) in my email each day. Is this a Twitter limit or something I can change in settings? I would like to have them all go to email.
Yes, unfortunately, Twitter tries to be "helpful" and reduce the number of email notifications you receive. There isn't much you can do. I built a WordPress plugin called Twools which you can use with a IFTTT to send mention notifications. It's a bit complicated to set up, but it's the only alternative I know.
What about ‘likes’ (♥️)? Twitter keeps turning off the likes a few seconds after I ‘like’ something, even after multiple attempts.
I wish I knew. There doesn't seem to be a limit for likes, but I bet there is a hidden one. I've noticed that issue too sometimes. Maybe you've hit a temporary limit on the number of likes. Come back in an hour and see if it's fixed. Or if not, they've blocked you from liking which would be
About the amount of the tweets I can see in one user's page,I only can see about 800 tweets of each user,is that a limitation,too?
As far as I know, there is no limit on the number of Tweets you can see at twitter.com, but because of Twitter's never-ending scroll, your browser can end up getting quite slow to load Tweets after a while.
Is there a rate limit for likes? I have been hit by this a couple of times and the limit seems to last for a lot longer than an hour. I do some responses but not many. Today is a prime example. I responded a few times and was liking some posts then boom, "Sorry, you are rate limited. Please wait a few moments then try again.".Tried logging off and back on, tried different web browsers on different platforms, tried the Windows 10 client over several hours without any resolution. Nothing in the linked email account about any infractions.
Why is this happening and what can I do about it?
Hi Bill. There are soft and hard limits on Twitter. As far as I know, there is no hard limit for likes on Twitter (although there could be). In your case, you've hit a soft limit I think. Twitter uses algorithms to keep the integrity of the site. The algorithm has detected an issue with the number of likes you've made. Sometimes it can be over-zealous. Unfortunately, there isn't much I can say to help at this stage. Just wait an hour or two and try again.
The website plainly says you can follow only 400 accounts daily if your NOT a verified account. If you ARE a verified account you can follow 1000. https://help.help.x.com/en/using-x/x-follow-limit
Thanks so much for letting me know about this. I've updated the article
I 've tried to restore my account since it was suspended but i didn't receive any code via sms so i kept trying over again and again and now it says i've reached my limit how long do i have to wait before trying again.
Sorry to hear that, Celianor. To be honest, I don't know how long you'll need to wait. It's not happened to me and I haven't found anything written down. Have you managed to get it sorted since? Ian
Is there a limit to the number of people that can follow me on twitter daily?
No, there is no limit on the number of people following you. Ian
Thank you for this Ian, it helps a lot to understand the rules (which change with time).
Thank you for keeping this post up to date :)
Thanks! It's hard to keep up with the changes! Ian
I'm doing research on the use of language in tweet's reply post. one tweet can have thousands of reply posts, but when we open it and scroll it down, it only shows a few reply posts. is there any limitation in displaying someone's tweet reply post? what is the exact limit? thank you in advance.
Do you know of a like limit Ian? I bet there’s a 1000 limit.
Hi Chris. I haven't been able to find a published hard limit on likes from Twitter. That doesn't mean one doesn't exist though. There are also flexible limits for each user that are set by an algorithm. So if it detects behaviour it doesn't like, it can impose a much lower limit on likes within a timeframe. It's all hidden, and for these algorithm set limits, even Twitter employees won't know what they are. Ian
As they as they are always temporary because I always liking lots. I find myself getting them often and it is frustrating waiting for one to go. I feel they can last up to 24 hours depending on your liking pattern. How long they last varies.
I’m still on a like limit and are so frustrated at the moment. I know they are set by algorithm but when will it go?
I have this same issue!
Seems to affects lots if they like loads. For the past week on average I’ve only been able to like 300 Tweets a day then I get hit with another stupid limit stopping me liking until the next day. It really is stupid.
Hi Chris - sorry for the delay in responding. I don't know that I will be of much help as it sounds as if this is an issue within Twitter...
I have an 8000 Twitter dm that wont send. Huh?
Even having issues with the Retweet button. In the past day not been able to RT posts as I normally would. The Retweet button turns green but not every single tweet that I think I’ve retweeted appears on my profile then. They need to appear on your profile after you’ve hit the Retweet button- that shows that they’ve been retweeted successfully. Only certain tweets at the minute I can properly retweet. Also, for the ones that aren’t retweeted successfully but the Retweet button is still green, I cannot undo them when I try to. I press Undo Retweet and the green Retweet button doesn’t go back to normal. Never ceases to amaze you what glitches you can come across.
Hi Chris. That is weird! It doesn't surprise me anymore, how many glitches these social networks have. A lot of it is down to the fact that they have hidden algorithms that try and determine what. is spammy behaviour. So sometimes Twitter doesn't even know what is happening.
But in your case, it sounds like a bug.
Having problems with the RT button too. Cannot RT every tweet that I would like to RT - the green button turns green but not for the ones I have RTd I don’t appear in the list of people who’ve shared it. Plus, those posts not shared don’t appear on my profile, and they have to.
For the posts I haven’t RTd I cannot even undo them when I press Undo Retweet.
My Twitter handle is a fan club page! I was getting 500 plus followers for few days normally I get 100 to 300 per day but then suddenly my follower count dropper and its not going up since a week my follower list is frozen!
Help me with that it’s so annoying as im working hard to keep ppl updated never used any foul language or negative tweets!
Is there any fix?