GreenSmith's dashboard

A comment on the question "Tweet Limit Exceeded" in Twitter:

Status blog shows another increase--to 100 requests per hour. Fantastic! Am getting occasional time outs, but Twitterific is still otherwise running smoothly. – ecsalomon, on July 11, 2008 02:13

A comment on the question "Tweet Limit Exceeded" in Twitter:

Wow, I hope they're able to keep it at 70. I saw from the Twitter Development Google Group that they had initially raised it to 40 before raising it to 70. The last two maintenance downtimes must have allowed them to add more headroom. – mdy, on July 09, 2008 05:09

A comment on the question "Tweet Limit Exceeded" in Twitter:

I am seeing the same thing. I've had twitterific updating every three minutes for almost an hour and have gotten no errors. – ecsalomon, on July 09, 2008 04:53

mdy replied on July 09, 2008 03:53 to the question "Tweet Limit Exceeded" in Twitter:

Is it just me or has the API rate limit been raised to 70?!

It still says 20 in the Twitter Status blog but I'm seeing 70 on the rate_limit_status API call

mdy replied on July 08, 2008 10:27 to the question "Tweet Limit Exceeded" in Twitter:

Hello. The negative API rate limit behavior is currently logged as an open bug in the Twitter API bug tracking system.

Fwiw, the person who logged the bug says that when they change their user password, the problem gets fixed. I don't know if the fix is temporary or permanent, though.

jeffglasson replied on July 07, 2008 20:37 to the question "Tweet Limit Exceeded" in Twitter:

I turned all clients off and removed the Twitter app from Facebook - then waited until the rate limit for my account reset to 20. I launced Tweetdeck and it successfully retrieved my Tweets...once. Upon checking the rate limit again, I've found it to be "-1" and it keeps counting into the negatives each time Tweetdeck tries to retrieve! - This only happens one of my accounts. The other account I have works just fine. So frustrating.

Sophie started following the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter.

Sophie started following the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter.

phlegon replied on June 11, 2008 20:27 to the question "Tweet Limit Exceeded" in Twitter:

UPDATE: As completely odd as this is, after changing my password yet again to no avail, I finally did lower the number of requests per hour and just left Twhirl on . . . and it eventually worked! I don't know why one request per day was being denied, and then lowering the limit allowed 30 per hour, but that's what happened. I haven't tried Netvibes again yet, partially because I don't really use Netvibes much anymore for anything. :D

corwin replied on June 10, 2008 13:40 to the question "Tweet Limit Exceeded" in Twitter:

I've been having this problem with any twitter client I've tried for the last couple of weeks now. I've throttled the requests down to the very lowest level to no avail. I was offline the whole weekend, and still came in yesterday and was immediately given the limit exceeded message. I tried changing my password, and that made no difference at all.

GreenSmith replied on June 03, 2008 21:40 to the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter:

@mdy Yes, but those using clients are likely more skewed to be the power users, and the people that may be putting out there that they're going elsewhere, or using Twitter less, making for a less engaging experience for more passive users, leading to decreased usage by a number of people.

A simple note, whether through their DMs, or via email, saying "If you use a third party client to get your Tweets, then....." No confusion, all smiles. Everybody's happy.

Lori replied on June 03, 2008 20:22 to the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter:

So they've created a twitter status blog (http://status.twitter.com/) and will announce there when the limits will be re-up'd to 70 per hour.

I was extremely frustrated by the lack of communication until mdy's response.

Lori started following the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter.

A comment on the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter:

I never knew that the new API call was there, it would be good to see applications now checking this and notifying of changes themselves.

As for the notification from twitter about the change. Good point, if 69% of the tweeting going on is not from client apps, thats great news.

So this screams the obvious at me. 31% is still a large proportion of the customer base. So, if we know they are there (since we have the stats) and we know who exactly they are, and even the applications they are using (since they are logged - "send via x..") why not send a DM to them?

As Chad said, the concept of a communication company putting out a communication should not be a big deal.. I think slashing the update limit in >half to be not only drastic but to do so without communication? Not cool. – Rob, on May 28, 2008 14:03

Chad Henderson replied on May 28, 2008 13:59 to the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter:

Seems like twitter could drop informational snippets like this in a users feed.

mdy replied on May 28, 2008 13:56 to the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter:

I think it's just a matter of time before the third-party app developers will make this information available through their respective applications.

Twitter added a new call to the Twitter API for checking the current API limit at the request of the third-party app developers, precisely for this purpose. This new API call was released only a day or two ago so I suspect the apps will be modified soon.

Fwiw, a recent blogpost by RWW shows that 56% of the tweets posted during their study used the web. IM and SMS accounted for 8% and 5% respectively.

These three channels don't require the API and together account for 69% of the tweet traffic.

So while sending an email to all Twitter users to tell them about the reduced API limit may seem like a logical thing to do, I think such an email will only confuse most of the recipients.

A notice on the website won't be effective either, since they're not applicable to web users and won't be seen if the user is accessing Twitter via a third-party application. They'll have hit their limit before they visit to the web to find out what's going on.

So imho, the best way to ensure that a third-party app user sees the revised API limit is to make that info available through the third-party app itself.

Chad Henderson replied on May 28, 2008 13:55 to the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter:

communication from a company that produces a communication product.. what a concept

Chad Henderson started following the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter.

ThomasHan started following the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter.

Rob replied on May 28, 2008 12:14 to the idea "Twitter suggestion: Send a note to all members about new 30 rec/hour limit!" in Twitter:

This should have been done BEFORE the limit wa sput into effect!