Following and being followed – the 2000 follow limit on Twitter
Posted By RichC on September 25, 2015
Those who are social networking gurus know that each network establishes limits to reduce abuse and spam. It is also a way to manage an excessive number of unbalanced following. New users may not realize the limits until they bump up against them. A common limit on Twitter is the number of people being followed without having followers. It is common to use Twitter as a “news feed” and easy to get carried away with following others. That’s all good until you cap out a the 2000 Follow Limit on Twitter without a reciprocating return.
What’s that all about?
Twitter has a policy that you can freely follow up to 2000 people but once you reach that threshold, you’re capped out until you have at least 1800 followers. They don’t necessarily have to be people following you back… you just need at least a 90% ratio of followers-to-following in order to keep following new people. This ratio exists even for people with very large networks. (Those following 200,000 people need to have at least 180,000 followers to keep following more people.)
Twitter does this to prevent spam accounts and others from simply following thousands and thousands of people. They assume that the ratio somehow proves legitimacy… that if you’re follow-worthy, you must be contributing in some way to the Twitterverse. Up to 2000, it doesn’t matter how many followers you have. It’s after that point that it becomes an issue.
So how can you get over the hump?
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