5,000 Is Not Enough!

Something annoying happened.?

My Twitter account @petersmoore hit the Twitter follow ceiling of 5,000 users a month ago. I had just moved countries so I had begun to follow Brazilian accounts that would help me connect to my new home and, I admit, that looked cool.

Suddenly, rudely, Twitter began to tell me: "Limit Reached. You are unable to follow more people at this time".

Is it my fault the Twittersphere is an amazing place full of interesting people? Nay.?

There are 200 million Twitter users, give or take a million or two bot and sock puppet accounts.?

Why can't I follow them all?

I thought Twitter was about connection, about global community, about unharnessed curiosity. Instead, it's about control and limits for the Followers, which I most definitely am. This arbitrary limit of 5,000 contrasts directly with Twitter’s own mission to be “an open service that’s home to a world of diverse people, perspectives, ideas, and information.” Apparently, we non-celebrity “normals” are only allowed to follow 0.000025% of Twitter users.?

Who knows how many people like me have run aground on the Great Follower Reef??

Followers like me are not a threat to Twitter. I don’t fall into the category of a “follow churner” who is trying to boost my own followers by following and dumping people, counting on them not to bother unfollowing me back. I’m not a robot complying with instructions to follow every account that mentions “bagel” + “Brazil”, for example. I’m not a cloner of Boba Fett’s follow list, hoping he had a brother I can use to fill out the Emperor’s latest online order.

I’m just a guy, curious about humanity, who wants to follow more than 5,000 accounts on my Twitter account. I’m a Follower and I’m not alone. We Followers are a boon to Twitter. We lurk, we heart, we engage occasionally, and we love to retweet without comment. Most importantly, we make people’s day by following their accounts when no one else is listening to them in their real lives. We do this because we are a curious bunch.?

One possibility I investigated was to get a Blue Check, verification that I am something more than one’s average Twitter user, which, of course, I am not. No luck. In order to be verified, I must be “authentic, notable, and active”. It is annoying to be part of Twitter’s Downworld, invisible and yet somehow necessary to a special class of Twitterarians, who can follow more than 5,000 people at a time, and who drive ad sales.?

Aside from the dubious alternative of creating yet another Twitter account (still cursed with the 5,000 following limit), there is no alternative for us enthusiastic followers who are not worthy of authentication by the Twitter Dataties.

I have yet to break down and sign up for a second, third or fourth account. People do this because they think it might help them organize their lives. But I know better. I do not want to silo my Twitter life. I like the chaos of a feed populated by dozens, nay, hundreds of different interests and voices. The chaos of opinion is the point of Twitter!?

The other option is to Unfollow. Unfortunately, Twitter’s own platform is no help in this regard. There are no in-house tools to manage the people we follow. By what criteria would I Unfollow? Someone hasn’t posted for 6 months? How would I know that unless I went through each account individually. That is an invitation to the carpal tunnel, a dark place if there ever was one. Besides, I have better things to do with my time, like scrolling through my Twitter feed.

There is an inherent design flaw to limiting the number of accounts one can follow when that is one of the primary functions of the Twitter platform.

Twitter is one hell of a pie. Twitter, it’s up to you to share a bigger bite.