A lot of the people on my friend list, on any of the sites I belong to, are there to keep up with the links I post to articles I write. This is a great source of promotion for my website. I’d hate to be turned off if I finally got 2000 followers.

I was actually going to write about this issue on my blog as well. If people truly undersood the power of the social web — and were using vehicles like Twitter correctly — they’d realize that it’s about BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS, not aggregating as many people as you can for purposes of ‘promoting’ (which, in essence, is them just yelling their message to the masses with the online equivalent of a bullhorn).

Personally, I want to have as much of a personal connection as I can with my following/followers, and as a result, my ratios are very close to 1:1 and I do not tweet when I’ve reached a certain # of followers that people seem to think make them popular or important.

If you want to advertise or market your products and services, there are plenty of vehicles through which to do that on the web. In my opinion, while there are halo brand-building and marketing benefits of Twitter, that is NOT the main driver, and I am in support of limits designed to curtail overt, in-your-face sales messages and behavior.

Twitter is such a powerful tool for connecting with like-minded individuals, building meaningful relationships and growing your business — and network — ORGANICALLY based on substantive conversations and exchanges, and if more people embraced that concept, and were using it to that end, these limits would NOT be an issue.

Don’t focus on traffic; focus on adding value. This is the long term approach that will always work on twitter (or most social eco-systems for that matter) Great content & relationships will organically drive traffic.

Again look at the august 7th post that I referenced from twitters blog. http://blog.twitter.com

It might appear that twitter is not the right tool set to drive you traffic in the ways that you want. If you are uncomfortable with operating in their rapidly changing ecosystem (and changing rules) then you might want to reconsider if you should even use twitter.

Read Nancy’s reply.

Cheers!

Interesting how you claim to have done extensive research, yet you couldn’t find a story when I gave you the two terms to Google.

Here’s the link:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=154

As far as those who haven’t “returned the favor”, many have, but most have not, yet. Many people on Twitter don’t post every hour, or even every day. My goal is to get our show out to as many as possible. Those who aren’t interested don’t need to follow me, and can very easily stop me from following them. This isn’t as though I’m spamming their email in-boxes.

And I didn’t miss any points in your post, though thanks for assuming I did. Just because I don’t agree with your approach and lack of understanding does not make me wrong.

Ken

I am not sure your extensive research would be the best fit for everyone. I agree with Ken on this one. I want the ability to use a social network tool to meet new people and not be cut off because the service can’t handle it or a few people that use the service decided how best to run my company. Twitter has great value and if you look at most of the members they are internet professionals looking to meet people and drive traffic. I am happy to remove people I am following who don’t turn out to have value for me or not be a good fit. I am pretty sure that of all the people on Twitter that there are more than 2000 people that my product or service could be a benefit to and if they decide not to follow me in return I fully understand that. As Ken stated … just because your service doesn’t need a large following doesn’t mean I might not be looking to BUILD one by meeting as many new people as possible. I am not a spammer. I have a service I am sharing info about. If they don’t want it I accept that. I will never ask them again. But on Twitter I might not have the chance anyway.

If Twitter has decided they do not want to be a service for larger internet companies that is their choice to limit it as you stated. But … they should tell you up front they are a more “personal” service than one for larger groups.

This is a great new world we live in and the opportunities are fantastic. Don’t try and keep others from having access to it. We might have bigger plans than you do and that’s ok. Capitalism (done in a professional manner) is a great thing!

Good Luck and Thanks for your thoughts.

Rich

We have done extensive research. Please share the link to the ZD net article to show how this limit is impacting large corporations. Can’t seem to locate it anywhere.

Twitter did make a policy change. As a platform owner of a free service that is their prerogative. This happens all the time in the world we live in. Many people still follow well over 2000 people. The limit is a soft limit based on the algorithm that twitter has implemented.

You missed 2 critical points in the post.
1. There is no limit to how many people can follow you. You following people does not drive traffic. People following you (no limit), listening, caring and engaging is what drives valuable traffic. Do not follow a shotgun approach.

2. You can’t follow them back and return the favor because because you collected too many people and no one collected you back (saw no value or had no interest in what you were sharing).

Suggestion: unfollow people that don’t follow you and start to build relationships with people that are following you and have interest in connecting.

But, I could be wrong. It sounds like it does matter to you.

And the reason it’s annoying is that Twitter keeps that info secret until you hit the 2000 mark. Then, as more and more people start to follow you, you find you are unable to return the favor.

This wouldn’t be a big deal at all if Twitter was honest about it, rather than giving you no info (and no customer service when you try to find out about it).

It amazes me when people decide that because something isn’t important to them, than it shouldn’t matter to anyone else, and those it does matter to are just cry babies.

Goggle Twitter and ZDNet, and you can see how this is impacting others, not friend-collectors but large corporations who were using Twitter to augment customer service, only to be stopped in their tracks by Twitters complete lack of customer service.

Funny how some people decide they’re an authority on something with no information…