Twitter Follow Limit: Let’s Get It Right, Guys

August 12, 2008

I think the blogosphere is erupting in a classic case of typo-gasm. Yesterday, I inadvertently broke news of a 2,000 follow limit by Twitter by linking to somebody else’s story. Louis Gray, I believe, took the post from here and ran with it. It ballooned into a huge piece of news today. Social media at work.

But, a very simple typo has led to a lot of people misstating the news. Even I, yesterday, was thinking follow and typed “follower”, which no doubt didn’t help the issue any. Thanks to Wordpress developer Mark Jaquith for pointing that out last night in a comment while I was in bed fail whaling.

So, the fact is this: Twitter is limiting how many people you can follow. It is NOT limiting how many people can follow you.

I just want to make sure that is super clear.

All the difference two letters can make.

Social Media

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Comments

Comment by Louis Gray on August 12, 2008 @ 5:01 pm

David, I’m getting a lot of credit for this one, but all I know is that I’ve been stopped at 2,000 Twitter accounts I can follow. I can delete and add, but never surpassing 2,000. I haven’t blogged about it, and took the tip on the 2,000 from your coverage yesterday, period.

I know you can have, probably, an infinite number of people following you. The theoretical limit is on those you can follow, which looks like 2,000, unless you were already ahead of that number.

Pingback by Stop Twitter Spam » Twitter Doing Damage Control On False Follow Limit Rumor on August 12, 2008 @ 7:04 pm

[...] written a new post acknowledging the error in his original post. David Risley has also written a follow-up post making it clear that the limit is on following, not followers. This entry was written by admin [...]