Maybe you were totally oblivious to the fact that Twitter imposes a ceiling to how many people you can follow on the service, but that’s how they roll.
Be that as it may, you might be delighted to learn that the micro-blogging startup is raising its previous follow limit of 2,000 accounts per user to a total of 5,000 accounts.
Once you’ve followed 5,000 users on Twitter, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow based on your specific follower-to-following ratio.
This change goes into effect today, said the company.
According to a support document, every user can now follow 5,000 people total. Beyond that, an error message will pop up saying you must wait until you have more followers in order to follow more users.
Additional technical limits apply:
“When you reach a daily or total limit and we show you an error message, you’ve hit a technical limit imposed to limit egregious behavior by spam accounts and to prevent strain on the site,” reads the document.
But why impose limits in the first place?
Twitter has the answer:
Limits improve site performance by ensuring that when we send a person’s message to all of their followers, the sending of that message is meaningful.
Follow limits cannot be lifted by Twitter, and everyone is subject to them, including verified and developer accounts. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable.
Like before, aggressive following behaviors—like indiscriminately following hundreds of accounts just to garner attention—may result in account suspension, regardless of your account’s technical ratio.
While there’s a limit to how many people you can follow on Twitter, the service doesn’t limit the number of followers you can have.
Source: Twitter