Vicki's dashboard

I have hit the 2000 follower limit and I can no longer add users to my account even though I have people requesting me. Yes I don't have a 1:1 following ratio but I am not some crazy spammer. I have a semi popular blog and people keep adding me... How to I get my limits raised besides being Robert Scoble or someone like that.

Fwiw, there's no limit to the number of people who can follow you, afaik. The Follow limit only applies to the number of people that each account can follow. – mdy, on October 06, 2008 13:51

People should be able to follow and be followed by an unlimited number. I can see restricting tweets and directs, but limiting the service's ability to serve as an information feed is nuts.

As opposed to an arbitrary limit? Absolutely. – radioproducer1, on October 03, 2008 00:56

I believe you were the one suggesting that middle ground. – Thomas, on October 03, 2008 00:40

So you want everyone to be able to read your posts, but you don't want just anyone following you? Seems like there should be some middle ground in many areas. – radioproducer1, on October 03, 2008 00:37

Here's an idea: let me block someone via the lingo so that I can do it from my twitter client without loading the website.

No, if you set your profile as private, people have to follow you to even read your posts. There's no middle ground, approve followers, but keep posts public. – Thomas, on October 03, 2008 00:04

Isn't that what the settings are for? Can't you set them so you approve followers? I know many on Twitter do that.

Being followed by a large number of spam followers is far more annoying. I've had to protect my updates to stop them and I need the email notification to let me know when I've got a genuine follower. If you've not experienced 10 followers in 1 hour all with the same ad which can range from lame to pornographic, you will have no idea what it's like.

I was only trying to suggest that if it's an annoyance, it seems like a better idea to disable the notification system than to set arbitrary limits for everyone.

Nice opening line, though, genius.

Ken

Are you crazy? I'm not just calling you names, I'm quite curious. Did you set it so if someone tries to friend you on myspace or facebook, you don't get a notice? People like to know who's following them, and an e-mail letting them know is a good way to do it. It is pretty hard to advocate disabling e-mail notices of new followers, especially when so many people find it useful. I have not once seen in this thread (before your post) someone advocate setting the default to "don't let me know a spammer is following me and potentially reading my posts". In fact, several people in this thread advocate FOR the e-mail notices, claiming they're following their customers or people that they're interested in and they think might be interested back. For example, @tweetupbadges follows people who mention tweetups and offers their services. That's not spam, that's thoughtful marketing. Think before you post. – Thomas, on October 02, 2008 21:41

So Twitter has imposed an arbitrary cap because users are too stupid to change their settings? Brilliant!

Ken

Hi REI. "Follow spam" works this way:

1. Twitter lets us specify if we want to be notified when someone follows us. I think it's safe to assume that a lot of users leave that setting on by default.

2. Spammers create a lot of accounts and start following thousands of other users with each account. Before follow limits were imposed, there were spam accounts that would follow well over 10,000 users. This causes Twitter to send "you have a new follower" email notification to all the people who were followed.

3. People who receive the "new follower' email notification are curious to see who has followed them. So they go visit the profile, only to find that their new follower is someone whose only tweet is an ad and a link to the product that the spammer is pushing.

Twitter consequently started capping the number of people that we can follow to limit the annoyance that is caused by a mass-following spammy account before Twitter gets a chance to suspend it.

I know this doesn't really solve your immediate problem, but I hope the info helps answer one of your questions. – mdy, on October 02, 2008 19:46

The twitter limit for number of people you follow could lead to people using multiple accounts.

I use Twitter to understand a group with similar interests. One easy one to reference is Realtors. I am interested in what is going on in the local markets and I want the local view. Twitter Realtors might be a self-selecting group but it still works for me. If I follow a lot there is little reason why they would follow me back. Somewhat asymetric information flow by design.

Hitting the limit without any real information about what my choices are leads me to consider just watching different accounts when I want to understand different topics. Maybe not post from different accounts submitting a Tweet has a different purpose than observing a group.

I get the idea that keeping some things quiet makes it easier to fight SPAM. I do not see why following too many triggers SPAM if I am following but not many are following me. It could be that I am just naive on this one.

This drives me crazy. When someone with protected updates follows me, even if I know who they are (e.g., author is a blogger whose work I enjoy, or even someone I know IRL), I might not want to follow them on Twitter. They might post 50 times in an hour about troubleshooting a technical issue (this is only slightly exaggerating a recent example from someone with protected updates whom I follow now), and even if they're otherwise profoundly fascinating people, that's going to drive me insane.

Having to submit a follow request to someone with protected updates without seeing them first seems akin to agreeing to a blind date. How much more embarrassing would it be to show up at such a date, and have to make excuses to leave after finally seeing the person and/or hearing them speak, than to, say, get to know them by correspondence and such in advance of agreeing to the date?

People get enough hurt feelings over being unfollowed when their updates are public. When they're private, and someone has gone through the extra step of requesting permission to follow them before unfollowing them later, the potential for hurt feelings is much greater.

I know people shouldn't have such thin skins, but the fact is, they do, and I hate hurting people's feelings. Not following someone whom you know in advance is going to bore you to tears (or offend or overwhelm you or whatever) is decidedly less awkward than following and later having to unfollow them.

Plus, it's inherently creepy to be followed by someone with protected updates. How do I know someone isn't a spammer or a vindictive stalker ex? (I've certainly dealt with enough of both.)

Please, can we have an alternative to this?

Actually, I saw the announcement and blog post after the fact, after @unhuman complained that someone had followed him, he couldn't read their tweets, and it annoyed him, http://twitter.com/unhuman/statuses/8... – Vicki, on September 23, 2008 15:37

Thanks mdy; I saw the blog post. I saw the announcement. The point of this Get Satisfaction isn't "Gee, what happened?". The point is "I know what happened and I do not approve." I understand privacy issues but they need to go both ways.

As Decklin says: If there's no UI for granting someone access other than approving a follow request, I think this is a bug. (Why would someone request to follow you if they don't know that you're not boring/spam/whatever?)

carocat says: Via Email search, mutual followers, reading your blog/site/forum online, real life friends...?

Nope. I don't know this person. They don't know me (no "real life friends")
No email to search. Many don't include a real name. Many don't show a blog link.

I don't answer phone calls from Caller-ID blocked people. I wouldn't talk to a masked person at a party (if it wasn't a costume party). I don't want someone standing in the shadows looking into my window.

If you won't tell me who you are... why should I let you "follow" me? If you want to follow me, I'd like to know a bit about who you are.

I'd be happy to have a grace period - the reciprocal follow could expire in 10 days. But if you can follow me, I want to know a little bit about you.