DISQUS

Andy Bakun · 7 months ago

Come on, folks; by using caps, twitter is _protecting_ the social graph! If everyone was linked to everyone else, there'd be no useful information to mine. Like who you should follow to reach your follow limit.

alex · 7 months ago

Twitter has designed a very clever tool and despite the various bumps in the road they have clearly made some good decisions. Good design is not about leaving everything optional and up to the user but to make the right choices for users so they do not have to. So if one feels the need to follow all their followers simply to make them feel good (because it is not practical to really follow thousands of people) I think Twitter is totally right to take measures to stop that.

This is just like the 5000 friends cap on facebook were some very vocal user made a lot of noise. There the answer was not to up the limit but to change the paradigm by introducing fan pages to the mix.

Louis Gray · 7 months ago

Alyx, yes, I see that exactly. I don't get why they want Kutcher to follow 93 and be followed by 1+ million. Is he using Twitter correctly? Is that why ev follows less than 1,000 but is followed by 500,000 and biz follows less than 200, but is followed by more than 400,000? I think they believe this is the "right way". It's an ego thing.

Tyler Braun · 7 months ago

I'm all for this. Nothing but positive thoughts from me about it.

guruvan (Rob Nelson) · 7 months ago

I think you hit it right there Louis. One more ego-based decision in a recent barrage of them This will not serve them to continue doing business in this fashion.

Robert Scoble · 7 months ago

Louis: this model was caused by Twitter's decisions. Yes, that is exactly what they are saying: that we should use Twitter the way that they are.

Dave Saunders · 7 months ago

I wonder if there's actually a scaling problem with the Twitter software and their dictating how Twitter is best used is actually a smoke screen for poorly designed software?

Robert Scoble · 7 months ago

Rob: bull. They have Oprah and are now mainstream. They don't care about anyone but celebrities anymore.

Ken Sheppardson · 7 months ago

... 'cause none of the applications or services we're talking about have any real impact on their growth or success. They're not in the infrastructure business at the moment.

Robert Scoble · 7 months ago

Rob: Twitter regularly bites the hand that feeds it. So far it hasn't hurt it one bit.

ChangeForge | Ken Stewart · 7 months ago

Gee, why is this surprising? Oh, that's right, it's not. Sorry, as revolutionary as Twitter can be, it's simply VHS waiting for Blu-Ray to hit.

mattsingley · 7 months ago

I think limiting some of the activity within reason (like the limit of following 1,000 per day) is necessary as the service bursts at the seams with new followers. With the massive influx of new users over the last couple of months, I'm surprised we haven't seen the fail whale more often. Caps like this only affect a very, very small percentage of users and I don't really see it as a bad thing. If it means that @aplusk will have to spend the next three years catching up so that the rest of us can maintain daily activity, I guess I'm okay with it. If their infrastructure can scale quickly, then by all means, the limits should be lifted, but so far they haven't been able to pull that off.

tibbon · 7 months ago

I still don't see how it's a bad thing. Why would CNN or Ashton want to follow back a million people? I don't care if it takes 3 years. If each of those people update 3x/day, and it takes 1 second to read each update, he'd spent the rest of his life reading them and never be able to see it all.

People need to break their ideas that all follows need to be reciprocal. Don't kid yourself into thinking that Ms Spears reads your tweets because she auto-followed everyone back.

The spammers and "entrepreneurs" are the worst thing to happen to Twitter, with the mega celebrities being second in line. What are the authentically contributing to the eco-system? How are they listening?

Hate to be the one to say it, but Twitter was better in 2007. I felt much closer connections then with my 100 followers at the time, than I feel with the 2000 I have now.

tibbon · 7 months ago

Additionally, some people only get large numbers of followers, because people assume that they will be followed back. Let's break this once and for all.

Keith Barrett · 7 months ago

Twitter seems to be all over the place on rules. First they turn off automatic follow, then they create a "suggested" list based on followed counts, then they turn off unfollow on Kutcher and CNN, then they grant Oprah (who only has 10 tweets) "suggested follow" status, and now they limit following to 1000/day (after they aready participated in the biggst following game in their history). Add to that the frequent downtime (I still can't change my email address), and their credibility is taking quite a lot of hits.

Alyx · 7 months ago

Why does this -taste- wrong to me? They 'pimp' celebs with the "Suggested User" list, parade Kutcher and CNN to drive up their numbers, but somehow want to limit how many I 'can' follow? FriendFeed looks better every single day.

Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct · 7 months ago

Honestly, WHO needs to follow more than 1,000 each day? http://status.twitter.com/post/98402835/a-note-...

Louis Gray · 7 months ago

Ed, here's an example. Let's say you have 12,000 followers. Many people do. You currently follow 400. You see notes saying people want to DM you but you're not following. (happens all the time) So you choose to let them DM you by following back. It will take 12 days. Alternatively, you just use a 3rd party service (until today) that catches you up.

Peter · 7 months ago

The fix for this is to have Twitter allow DMs from people you don't follow, if you select that option. The fix is *not* to follow all 12,000 people back, because then your timeline is too full to be actually useful. Unless you only use Twitter for DMs and @replies, in which case you might as well use email.

Davide D'Incau · 7 months ago

Louis: maybe that is the model for people like Kutcher who anyway has tons of people interested in what he does and uses twitter in a way that fits with his needs. Then there are less well known people who want to use twitter for different reasons and therefore might have more balance in followers vs friends ratio.

guruvan (Rob Nelson) · 7 months ago

Robert: I know they don't CARE, but will it SERVE them. I don't think it will.

Rajtilak Bhattacharjee · 7 months ago

I don't think they would ever be able to put it into action. Honestly, it would take quite a bit of fun away from Twitter, especially for the Twitteratis.

guruvan (Rob Nelson) · 7 months ago

3rd party application developers have had a huge part to do with their success. if the developer community hadn't supported twitter, they would not have gotten to where there are. This is a matter of biting the hand that feeds them. And while the dog may not give a damn who it bites that does not mean it's going to get fed from the same hand tomorrow

guruvan (Rob Nelson) · 7 months ago

Robert: Fads die as quickly as they come. Especially in the entertainment industry that Twitter has chosen to make itself part of. Without the applications that made twitter they would be nothing. and if they continue to drive developers away, and to consider alternatives, the fad will die down. It may not be overnight, but it won't last forever.

alex · 7 months ago

Twitter made a very conscious effort to nurture these applications - and they still do.

Ken Sheppardson · 7 months ago

They don't tend to bite the hands that feed them users, traffic, or press.

Robert Scoble · 7 months ago

Ken: totally wrong. I know several such hands that Twitter has bitten.

Ken Sheppardson · 7 months ago

Robert: Yeah, I got carried away there for a minute :-)

guruvan (Rob Nelson) · 7 months ago

Andy: The limits that they're using are dead wrong to achieve their stated goals, and the goal you're suggesting

Andy Bakun · 7 months ago

guruvan, I know (that was sarcasm). -- Can we get some sarcasm metadata flag, FF? COMEON!

guruvan (Rob Nelson) · 7 months ago

<sarcasm> </sarcasm> lol! gotta use the tags sometimes

Andy Bakun · 7 months ago

Nice chrisloft.

Chris Loft · 7 months ago

Twitter caps - OPRAH KNOWS ALL ABOUT TWITTER CAPS

guruvan (Rob Nelson) · 7 months ago

:-)

Scott Manesis · 7 months ago

That stinks.If twitter does start capping followers they won't have an issue for too long as this opens up a market for a new mini blog site to put them out of business simply by offering no limit following. This is a dumb move on twitters behalf.

Gary Tripp · 7 months ago

Great post ! @ihospitality

crisatunity · 7 months ago

But, how is this affecting Robert Scoble? ;)

Seriously, whenever Twitter institutes one-size-fits-all solutions to problems they see they are demonstrating blindness to their greatest strength: Twitter is open and flexible enough for users to use it in radically different ways.

It wouldn't take more than average design and development effort to implement limitations that overwhelmingly affect only the spammies and kooks. They should aim higher in their constraints.

Usman Latif · 7 months ago

So what about the 1.1 ratio or 110% formula for following..?

Ari Herzog · 7 months ago

This new decision must be revenge. For several months ending last Thursday, I was following approximately 10% of my followers. After abruptly changing my Twitter strategy to follow everyone and further auto-follow, not to mention follow folks in neither action, I'm now prevented from following more.

It must be revenge. So.. now I go to twitter.com and see who I can unfollow so I can follow someone I just tweeted with, but then I'll bet the auto-follow will kick in and BAM again.

This new policy bites, and Robert Scoble nailed why.

Dave Saunders · 7 months ago

I think Twitter is completely wrong in telling the public how Twitter is and isn't best used. Can you imagine visiting a party and refusing to accept a business card from someone who asks for yours? Most would see you as an arrogant snob. Saying that you can't follow everyone who follows you creates the same sort of elitist air through Twitter as well.

As for their suggestion that "no one can keep up with so many followers," Twitter isn't email. Run one of the many fine Twitter clients like TweetDeck to keep an eye out for conversations in which you're interested and see what's happening in your Twitter stream here-and-now, but scroll back and see what your list has been up to since you last logged in? C'mon, we barely do that with email, why would you do that with Twitter?

@JoeHobot · 7 months ago

Louis, this twitter cap is pure BS ...dev's should go on strike! ....... :)

N'ways : I just wish the Suggested User list would never existed.

Wrong people are put on the list and don't deserve to be promoted by that devil's ev list :).

It's same like BS with Facebook Ego....if Julia Allison wouldn't do a great BJ to Zuckerberg , she would of never been promoted on FB....well now she is... :) there I said it hahahah.......

mysticventures · 7 months ago

It always amazes me when service providers in the social media arena fails to communicate with the community that drives their service.

Bill Sodeman · 7 months ago

So has Twitter jumped the shark?

geogeller · 7 months ago

twitter was designed in response to sms txt messages as is the 140 characters but they are stuck in their old model and believing in their own propaganda

twitter as i wrote yesterday in a tweet is about follwoing ideas/people not just people to cap twitter at 2000 following by some arbitrary nonsense defeats it purpose and potential as an open inviting social sculpture - i have a tag #end2000followlimit - its just a way of saying i think twitter is running with their shoes tied together - they are falling in to the abyss of not listening to their audience and believing in their own propaganda - facebook mistake to twitters benefit among other things is there 5000 limit which is also crazy for people who have more followers they can't follow - i can't follow my own family and friends right now unless i delete some or somebody has enough of my nonsense - so actually facebook made twitter more then it is by playing the same limitation game - do you think chris brogan and garyvee and many others would have stayed with had they had 2000 caps - food for thought geo geller

Al Mac · 7 months ago

Interesting stuff. The trouble with spammers is they are like badly behaved children, they need constant supervision. I'm sure the tweet team did not want to have to deal with that side of things, who does? Perhaps people will migrate to a slicker service and we will fight the same battle there, or perhaps Twitter will revolutionize the way spam is handled without effecting their service. Lets hope for the later.

blujam · 5 months ago

Thank you for the insight Louis...

I find it highly irritating that twitter can't even
eliminate the programming glitches in their front
end, much less the goofy limitations...

it's awful confusing, but you shed some
light on it, thanks...

Jeff Davis CEO
WorkAtHomeJobsNow.com