That's going to mess with Scoble's idea that it is more important who you are following, than who follows you. - Douglas E. Welch from twhirl

It messes with *my* idea of that too!! I think it was Francine who told @scobleizer at the HMB meetup about this and he didn't believe they would do it - thought it was a rumor. I wish he had been right. It's moronic!! - Lucretia Pruitt

I feel Twitter is handling this all wrong...there was no warning...no rules...and there seems to be different caps for different people...i feel like a whiny 5 year old...but....it's not fair! lol... - Laura

That's my problem with it too, Laura - they seem to have 'raised' my cap, but I know that there were others with same issue... like @creativesage - and it shouldn't be a stealth thing. Why should some users get to follow 10k and some not? b/c they already did? unsound logic :( - Lucretia Pruitt

serves 'yall right. you started picking on me and my feeds and now you r stuck with a fascist service. don't say I didn't warn 'yall. have fun. I like it here so much better. I still see twitter coming in as virtual feeds even if you block my ass. Purple Car and eMOM... you lose! - Noah David Simon

Noah - don't start your war w/ other people over here on my FF - I respect your space - please show me the same consideration. :) Yes, I know you hate Twitter - but that has nothing to do with attacking folks on my FF you!! And it's my birthday today, so you have to play nice over here :) - Lucretia Pruitt

I agree with Noah on Twitter abuse of users and Fascism! And that some Tweeps had heavy handiness in having him banned by the developers! But Noah leave these people alone! Their actions speak for themselves! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

happy belated birthday - Noah David Simon

Amazing. If anything they should put a cap on followers, not people you are following. This is a sad way to deal with the scale problems. On the other hand I haven't followed anyone on Twitter lately. - Robert Scoble

Lucretia: I was wondering who you were talking to but then I realized I blocked Noah a while back. - Robert Scoble

oink... Buenos Dias! pig f#(% http://friendfeed.com/e... - Noah David Simon

Here's the link in the screenshot: http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter... - Vincent X

* Maximum number of follow attempts in a day. Which means you can still follow your 10,000 users but just not all in one day. - Andrew Trinh

Even Robert's idea has issues. Say the cap is x number of followers and I want to follow you but I'm x+1. I have no way of following you if I wanted to unless someone else drops out. That's Facebook-ish in its limit of 5,000 friends. - Johnny Worthington

"* 1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices" Updates by me or that I receive? - Johnny Worthington

the answer to these questions in the end is not so much an engineering question as a cultural one. We can understand a lot about social networks by studying a nations highway systems. (more....) - Noah David Simon

when Robert Moses was building roads it became apparent that there were traffic problems. The initial solution. ---> building better and more roads did not solve the problem. the more roads... the more cars (more....) - Noah David Simon

the only legitimate answer to the problem is to not limit driving, but to create alternative modes of travel. if twitter is hoarding technology like they did, then alternative networks without the traffic problems will not grow. it is a monopoly problem... (more....) - Noah David Simon

The Matrix runs on human batteries baby! - Mark Forman

when I say twitter is fascist. I MEAN IT! listen to me finally. - Noah David Simon

Noah - I respect that your opinion differs - but please do me the courtesy of not attacking someone I consider a friend on my FF stream. That's the one thing that could cause me to block you. Not because I don't think you have a right to hold or share your opinion, but b/c I don't want you doing it at my party - if you must, please do it at yours. Now - what were you saying about cultural v. engineering? - Lucretia Pruitt

Twitter is facist... Loooooooooong stretch my friend. The reason other networks do not grow is that the mass public have choosen to come (and stay) with twitter. And the fact that other services exist dispells the fascist tag as Twitter are to busy fixing themselves to exercise their power. And who would want the technology twitter is hording... it's broken. - Johnny Worthington

Robert - I agree that there must be a better solution - but to cap people at different levels seems to me to be the bigger issue. I mean, if they want to say "if you want more than X followers or following, you must have a Pro account" then I'm game - but to limit some to lower numbers than others seems like a really bad move. :( - Lucretia Pruitt

Lucretia: I agree. It is a tough problem. Capping per day seems ok, though. - Robert Scoble

twitter is talking about engineering because it is a red herring. why can't I reply here in friendfeed to anything else but twitter? why does my facebook update only respond to twitter? why why why? because the technology standard is being hoarded. they are going around playing like "Lucy from Peanuts" http://friendfeed.com/e... trying to make everyone shorter, and the reality is they attract people who are good at controlling crowds. sorry Lucretia u know who I'm talking about... but they are guilty of playing Grammar school teacher under a fascist regime. - Noah David Simon

the technology is broken... but twitter controls the API game - Noah David Simon

The limit makes who you are following even more important, so I'd say it reinforces Scoble's idea. Now the way this is communicated is appalling, but the idea of a limit by itself is not necessarily bad. - Antoine Bertier

I don't want flowers before you sodomize me! inform the people about socialized castration? This network is guilty of enough PR. they blame any square peg they can, but in the end they are the ones who are limiting innovation. just go along with the crowd and don't complain. Lemmings. Free the damn API so we can keep our balls. let me feed on the network I want, using the interface given! - Noah David Simon

I have been struggling in utter frustration after being capped abruptly, with no warning. I cannot follow anyone else, after meeting many new people in the past two weeks who have added me. It is actually causing me to LOSE followers because people know that I can't follow them back. I follow more people than follow me, which I thought was a GOOD thing, and now I'm being penalized for it. This is incredibly stupid on Twitter's part, because I have corporate clients on Twitter and was about to sign up more.. - Cathryn Hrudicka

Twiitter=Fail - Fred Grott

(cont.) How can I keep recommending clients sign up for Twitter when they might get capped abruptly at any moment, with no warning? This, on top of the crashes—and yet, Twitter claims to want more corporate clients. So stupid and short-sighted on their part. I have now spent a week in this frustrating mode, where no one responded to my tweets, multiple emails or inquiries about how long my quota would last... - Cathryn Hrudicka

(cont.) Finally, today, I got an email from Crystal at Twitter, reiterating the quota limits, and saying something like, gee, I guess this hasn't worked well for you. She said she would TRY to talk someone into getting rid of my quota, so I still don't know how long this will last or when I will be released from quota prison. This has completely destroyed my enjoyment of Twitter and has wasted tons of my time. I'm very, very angry and sad about it. - Cathryn Hrudicka

(cont.) I no longer enjoy being on Twitter. It has driven me to spend more time on my other socnets. After specifcially tweeting @Ev @Biz @Jack several times, and not having any of them respond to me (they have on other occasions), I may have no choice but to continue being very noisy about this predicament, and blogging negatively about Twitter. My situation is shared by @Mark Davidson and @williamsba, who posted on his blog re Twitter quotas:: http://tinyurl.com/5m7wmz We're all very frustrated by it. - Cathryn Hrudicka

(cont.) The only thing I can possibly "like" about this is that Lucretia brought it up here—thank you, Lucretia. I have gotten many msgs. of support on Twitter from my friends who have seen my tweets and had no idea these quotas existed or were being doled out arbitrarily to people who are following less than 2500-3000 people. Why are only some of us being singled out for these quotas when clearly we're not spammers & are "good Twitter citizens"? :-( - Cathryn Hrudicka

you stood and watched them libel me and now you have reaped what you have sown. now you all suffer the limitations burdened on you arbitrarily. now you all have been silenced. twitter has failed in biblical proportions and the diaspora has just begun. I might change my name to Jeremiah. none of you headed my warning. Babylon has conquered you. - Noah David Simon

“Then said they, Come and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.” - Noah David Simon

I am a good twitter citizen Cathryn and now you understand that @Panopticons was putting into question the idea of proportion within a given interface. The incredible catastrophe of philosophical paradox was sealed when they decided to punish me because they didn't like my thoughts. most of the people stood by and decided to be "Liberal" on their concept of communications abuse and were discriminating between structural and contextual concepts. I did not create the twitter interface. - Noah David Simon

I used the same interface you did when I decided to build my profiles. there were at the time no limitations outlined by twitter terms in conflict with what I was doing. The rules became arbitrary. In the same respect your suffering accounts used the same interface and the rules of twitter changed Cathryn. You were caught in the same pit of discretion that I was caught in. They are already using a proportional argument to limit you because you are not as big as an Alister. Slippery slopes indeed! - Noah David Simon

gosh people just LEAVE Twitter........ problem solved. - ChaCha Fance

not that simple. I integrate my networks. the way the APIs work on most places, without twitter I can't be part of the conversation. for here example twitter doubles each comment in a twitter post. the other services don't do this. they have a lock on facebook upates for the most part as well... and it is the only way I know of to bring myspace into the rest of the web. whatever the have needs to be in the hands of others or it is an unfair monopoly. - Noah David Simon

So after my angst outburst last p.m., I got this cryptic email from Twitter today: "Thanks for requesting to be on Twitter's API whitelist. We've approved your request! You should find any rate limits no longer apply to authenticated requests made by CreativeSage. This change should take effect within the next 24 hours. Thanks much, and good luck with your application!" So now we have to "apply" to NOT have quotas? I guess my repeated tweets & msgs. count as an "application." - Cathryn Hrudicka

ChaCha Fance, It's not quite so simple when you have clients and project collaborators or co-workers on Twitter, and you've spent over a year building up a community there. I did consider yanking my acct. & completely leaving Twitter, but had to think about all of this. Instead, I think we're seeing people switching more of their conversation time to other socnets, like FriendFeed.:-) - Cathryn Hrudicka

Cathryn - that email response sounds like something that a developer would get. Did you send a formal request to be added to the API whitelist or did that email arrive out of the blue? - Mike Doeff

It arrived out of the blue, seemingly very separate from my email from Crystal, who just sent me another email saying they "haven't forgotten me" and are trying to work out a solution. Still no definite indication when. - Cathryn Hrudicka

That API whitelist that they referred to in the email has been used for several months to allow approved applications (e.g. Twitturly) to bypass the API limits. They might be using the same whitelist to help you with your problem. That would explain why they wished you good luck with your application. Maybe you got some kind of form letter that usually goes to developers. - Mike Doeff

I was a bit puzzled why they said "my application" because I didn't receive any kind of form letter or application. I'll try to email Crystal again and see what can be done. I'd like to get them to do it within the 24 hrs. they mentioned. I guess a work-around would be to start another Twitter acct., but then that's another one to manage. We'll see. Thanks for this info, it's helpful.:-) - Cathryn Hrudicka