daily follow/unfollow/update limit

[Developer In London]

I saw on the API documentation the daily limit is 1000 per day. But it seems its lower then that. Is it a %age based limit?

Thanks

Nayeem

[Doug Williams]

The limits have not changed. We enforce the limits within hour intervals. Could the behavior you witnessed be explained by this enforcement policy?

Thanks,
Doug

[Developer In London]

It doesnt seem to be anything hourly. I do notice it seems to give a 'you have reached your daily follow limit' after 500 follows on a new account. It seems to go by the 500 number quite regularly... I initially thought this might be a new unannounced limit for new accounts.

2009/7/2 Doug Williams <do...@twitter.com>

--
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                    (il),-''  (li),'  ((!.-'
.

[Dewald Pretorius]

I have noticed the same thing, and there is no predictable pattern to
it.

The API kicks back the limit exceeded message on numbers far below
1,000.

The same goes for DMs. I've seen a person being limited after 200 DMs
have been sent.

[Doug Williams]

It initially seemed like you were asking about the update limit but now you are talking about following limits. Can you be more specific on the behavior you are seeing and why you feel it is an issue? We can argument the documentation to clear the confusion but I'm not following your exact problem.

Thanks,
Doug

[RandyC]

Doug,

I think this is very similar to the email I sent in to
a...@twitter.com. We've been getting inexplicably blocked from
following on accounts we're managing that have < 1.0 following/
follower ratio, large numbers of followers, less than 60/hour
following rates, less than 300/day following, etc. It seems that
there are daily limits anywhere from 100 to 300 similar to the Chris
Latko query earlier: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/74a1b30352a93927#

Perhaps the operations changed even though the stated rules or
policies didn't? Any insights you can provide would be truly
appreciated.

RandyC
webpartner.com

[Dewald Pretorius]

Doug,

This is closely related to the DM daily limit email exchange we had
about a month or two ago, where I sent you the details of users who
get rate limited at around 200 to 250 DMs for the day instead of the
published 1,000 limit.

[Developer In London]

yes initially i thought the follow/update/unfollow/dm are all in the same limits. but i can see now (http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/15364) that the 1000 only applies for Updates/dms not for follow/unfollow. That only requires a near 1:1 ratio. Some documentation on what the maximum follow limit is for any specific account would be good to know. Eg an account with x followers can follow maximum y in any specific day. This can ensure we stay within twitter's guideline instead of keep hitting limit.

Thanks,

Nayeem

2009/7/2 Doug Williams <do...@twitter.com>

[bakedpotato]

Doug,

I have been told by support (Lukester) that my account was exceeding
following limits of over 1000/day. 5 days ago I disabled SocialToo
which was set to follow 100/day. I have since tried to add followers
(the last 4 days) yet have been restricted do so at all.

Can you please help me understand what I can do to add followers
again?

Thanks for your attention.

[Chris Latko]

Yes,

My users are in the same predicament. They seem to hit a daily limit
of 200 follows. My personal account has a higher limit of 500. No DMs
are sent through any of these accounts. Is there something I'm missing?

Thank you,

Chris

--
Chris Latko
www.latko.org
@clatko

[Doug Williams]

Hi all --
The current update/follower/unfollower limits are not programmatically accessible for a given account in large part because there is little real value. Most use cases which find such information valuable is behavior that we do not feel benefits Twitter as a whole.

Do you have a non-spammy app or app that does not contribute to follower churn where a limits method would help? If so, please share.

Thanks,
Doug