Last week Twitter implemented a limit on the number of people you’re allowed to follow. I’ve seen numerous numbers, but the common limit seems to be 2k users. While the limit is a work in progress, that’s a lot of (hopefully) great conversation to go around. However, for major players in the web game, or those who are rapidly approaching the 2k follower limit, will this cause you to switch services?

Helping Out: Tips On Staying Below Twitter’s Limits

To help myself not go over the limit, if I’m subscribing to anyone’s blog updates via Twitter, I’ll now subscribe to their RSS feed or grab the RSS feed for their Twitter accounts. It would help a ton if the services that I subscribe to posts more of their updates via the service’s blog rather than on Twitter.

Otherwise, there’s nothing more to do except to stop following those that really don’t contribute to the information that I’d like to see in my Twitter stream.

Not The Way To Go: Limit The New, Not The Old

While it’s nice to see that Twitter is doing their best to handle the spam problem that’s beginning to get out of control, limits on the number of people you can and can’t follow can’t be the solution for all current accounts. It would be better to impose these limits on new accounts that are being created.

On another note, since I’m not at 2k this won’t cause me to switch from Twitter. However, it’s very likely that if I ever reach the limit, there would be a ton of conflicting opinions to have about Twitter. You’ve basically stalled the growth of your own personal circle of connections. In turn, you’re wondering if anyone important has stopped or decided not to follow you just because of the limit. That’s not something you should have to worry about with any service.

What are your thoughts on the limit? If you’re over 2k, what will you do? If you’re under 2k is this posing any kind of problems for you?

Scaling Web 2.0 Is A Serious Problem

The limit also poses some interesting thoughts on Web 2.0 services, especially social media related services. There’s a serious scaling problem going on these days. First Facebook limits the number of friends you can have, and now Twitter limits your followings. While Twitter blames the limits on spammers, which I’m not saying isn’t true, they also have a scaling problem and this limit will help out with that a ton!

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