In late April this year, the Twitter community was taken by surprise when the owners of Twitter suddenly imposed a new rule (known at the Twitter slap) that limited the number of people you could follow to 1000 per day.
They have also taken action over the last few days, suspending thousands of accounts that they regard as spam. Many users have reported as many as 300 followers disappearing from their communities.
So why has Twitter made these changes?
The official line is that Twitter are attempting to strike a balance between popular users who follow people who follow them and those who follow thousands of people in the expectation of gaining new followers.
However, due to the massive growth of Twitter, it may also be an attempt to ease the load on the Twitter servers. In recent months it has been extremely slow and the fail whale has become a regular fixture on our screens.
Part of the reason behind this has been the massive increase in people using 3rd party tools to automate their Twitter account. In particular, the auto-follow tools that allow you to automatically follow everyone who follows you has placed a massive strain on the network.
Are these changes a good idea?
At first glance, these changes look like a sensible move to reduce the load on their servers and reduce the blatant manipulation of Twitter for marketing purposes.
But the more you consider the situation, the new 1000 rule has a couple of major flaws;
Problem Number 1
It’s a blanket rule. Whether you’re a super user with a gazillion followers or a Twitter newbie, you can’t follow more than 1000 users per day.
So popular Twitter users who attract more than an average of 1000 followers per day won’t be able to follow everyone who follows them.
As things stand, this isn’t a big deal (I don’t think anyone is under the illusion that being followed by a Twitter giant is anything more than a mechanical process on their part).
However, it does mark an important shift in the way that people view the Twitter service. If people become used to following certain people without the expectation of being followed back, the sense of reciprocity that was a major attraction for many people will diminish.
The sense of community will be reduced and instead replaced by an atmosphere of celebrity/guru following and broadcast announcements rather than genuine interaction.
Problem Number 2
It won’t stop many of the undesirable practices that Twitter wants to prevent. In fact, it may even make things worse.
First, the section of Twitter users who only follow other users in order to be followed will just set up multiple accounts. This proliferation of throw away accounts will lower the quality of the network.
Here’s why…
When someone spends time and effort building up a targeted community of 100,000 followers, a natural caution develops. They don’t want to do anything that will jeopardize their account.
But if they have 20 different accounts with 5,000 followers on each, they’ll be less reluctant to use borderline techniques. And if one or two of their accounts are suspended, it’s not the end of the world.
Second, if someone has one main Twitter account they may post 10 messages per day. And based on their own level of integrity, the number of those that promote their own content may range from 1 all the way up to 10.
If they have 20 accounts with their followers spread across them, they will have to post 10 messages to each account (using one of the many automation tools available) to achieve the same level of publicity for their own content.
That’s 200 tweets per day instead of just 10, which won’t do much to take the load off the Twitter servers. It will also reduce the ratio of genuine tweets to tweets with an ulterior motive by a significant factor.
Perhaps it would be best if Twitter introduced a quality score algorithm similar to the one used by Google. Several factors could be used to calculate a quality score for every user.
Each user would then be able to follow as many people as they want, with the knowledge that the total quality score of the users that they follow (in relation to the combined quality scores of their followers), will alter their own quality score which will either encourage or deter the people that they follow from reciprocating. So the overall emphasis would be on balance and developing a coherent community rather than indiscriminate bulk following.
This would give Twitter a subtle yet powerful way to cultivate the exact atmosphere that they want, without resorting to the blanket style regulations that they have imposed in recent months.
But what do you think? Do you like the new limit of 1000 follows per day? Do you think it should be higher or lower?
Was this the best rule that Twitter could have used? What rule would you prefer?
Add your thoughts below. If the folk at Twitter want to retain the loyalty of their most devoted users, every piece of feedback that exists online will help them to shape their business in a way that the majority of users can accept.
In the meantime, here’s how to protect your Twitter account from these changes?
- Don’t try to follow more than 1000 people per day.
- Try to grow your community at a stable rate. It’s better to follow 150 people every day rather than 1000 people once a week.
- Follow people who have something in common with the info on your bio or the content of your tweets.
- Don’t follow people who appear to be following vast numbers of unrelated people every day just to gain new followers.
These basic precautions will help to prevent your account tripping any of the red flags that will cause Twitter to review and possibly suspend your account.
If you want to build your Twitter community without running the risk of suffering from the Twitter slap, Tweet Adder is a new tool that allows you to manage your account and build a well targeted community.
Once Tweet Adder is setup, you can set a daily follow limit and the system will find relevant people for you to follow without having to worry about suffering from the Twitter slap. This will allow you to spend your time on the most important aspect of Twitter - interacting with people and forming mutually beneficial relationships with other people in your micro community.
17 comments ↓
1,000 followers a day is plenty.
Thats what I also thought John, but over the last week or 2 I pretty close to that figure quite a few times! very good post, thank you very much.
Daniel’s last blog post..More Twitter followers,what not to do.
Is it good or bad?
Well, we can spin this in many different ways. One thing for sure is that if you are following more than 1000 people per day there is no way that you can build any kind of relationship that way.
At the end of the day social media is about being social. How can you expect to automate everything and create anything of value. Great post and thank you for shedding some insight on things.
http://AshleyBolivar.com
Ashley Bolivar’s last blog post..Blogging Is One Of Network Marketing Success Tools.
Why not limit the number of new accounts by the same ip address? Multiple accounts are the problem! I have had followers with the same name, profile, and pic affix themselves to me!
John - I agree that is plenty of people to follow per day.
Ashley - You are spot on. Social Media is about being social and building relationships. If you are just out to build the biggest list of followers while not providing value you are dead in the water.
Dana - This seems to be a trend with spammers opening up new accounts and not even bothering to use different avatars. They are usually pretty easy to identify as these spammers usually follow same account within minutes of each other.
I am sure over time Twitter will adjust how this process works as they evolve their system. Thanks for great feedback everyone. Keep them coming
James Rivers
Twitter Power Team
I’m sorry, but following 1000 people, let alone 1000 per day doesnt seem very “social”. In fact it seems antisocial.
That’s following 41 people per hour, on a 24 hour basis.
Its not likely that you would find any value in that. How could you possibly vet that number of people? Its ridiculous. I dont think people should just blindly follow back. That is what will devalue the network. Not a rather high limit.
willemrt’s last blog post..Ignoramus - Fox mistakes Obama for an "Ignorant Lawyer"
I would imagine that over time Twitter will implement restrictions to stave off all of the automation and blatant advertising that has flooded it. Like it or not, Twitter in it’s present form is a very easy platform to take advantage of for the purpose of sales. I doubt this status quo will persist in the future.
@John - what would help is doing minimal email verification. Right now you can sign up without even giving them a legitimate email address.
Nothing wrong with having a few multiple accounts, but creating dozens of duplicate accounts is a problem.
I wonder what the 300+ people who got banned were doing specifically, because none of our accounts had problems.
[...] admin put an intriguing blog post on How To Protect Yourself From The Twitter SlapHere’s a quick excerptAshley - You are spot on. Social Media is about being social and building relationships. If you are just out to build the biggest list of followers while not providing value you are dead in the water. … [...]
Great article and further proves that Twitter will be seamless once Google Wave is introduced to the public. This is probably the first step of many in further proving this point.
Hamza Davis’s last blog post..The Best Secrets of Amazing Kettlebell Workout Produces Superior Results - Interesting Article
Do you really care about me
Or are you wanting to sell me
A software package or service?
ZuDfunck’s last blog post..What Google was originally called and other interesting facts…
I think the people at Twitter have only slowed their growth rate by setting up the 1000 follower limit.
If people who want to follow massive amounts of people just to get a huge list of followers, they will just create several accounts which just creates another problem.
I think they just need to be more creative and come up with a review system almost like the same system Apple uses for their iPhone Apps.
Twitter users could rate another Twitter user’s profile 10 stars and leave a 140 character review on the quality of that person’s Twitter profile.
In the future people will shun Twitter automated accounts and seek out real people to connect with.
Thats is what I need to create… The Twitter Automation Black Ball Twitter App! LOL
Just my 2 cents!
Ryan Bessling
http://twitterconferencing.com
I had my account suspended and received a message from Twitter support stating “Hummingbird is generally frowned upon”. Although I am not using that particular software, they seem to be targeting accounts with any third party platforms that they say “encourage” a violation of Twitter’s terms of service.
I have been capped several times in trying to add people- very frustrating, but some of those 3rd party sites can be very unfriendly as well. Suppose overall its a good thing and helps protect the users from Spam.
Thanks for the tool Tweet Adder, we will test it out and see the quality of it,we agree Twitter should use simlar to google.
Brian Baulch´s last blog ..Your Private Label Internet Empire Is Here!
So, I have just been slapped (suspended) due to suspicious activity.. and I have no clue why, I have not done any spamming, and its been like 10 days with no response from twitter… I was getting way more followers than I was following, so whats the deal Twitter? I am just trying to help Internet marketers and start making a living online, i was not spamming people.
If you’re getting slapped you’re doing it wrong. We have over a dozen accounts and haven’t ever been slapped. Just click on our name to see what we’re doing. We did an experiment in Twitter Marketing yesterday that yielded $569.95 in sales.
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