To help control spam, maintain the integrity of the network and prevent that dreaded Failed Whale from showing up too often, Twitter maintain limits on how many people you can follow and how often you can follow. For those who don’t know the limits, this post will lay them out.
Maximum Following Limit: 2,000 or 110% of Followers
The maximum number of people you can follow at any one time is 2,000 or 110% of your followers, whichever is higher. So, if you have less than 2,000 followers, you can follow up to 2,000 people.
If you have more than 2,000 followers, you can follow up to 110% of that figure. So, if you have 5,000 people following you, you can follow 5,500.
Maximum Daily Following Limit: 1,000
Twitter limits the number of accounts that a single person can follow in a day to 1,000. For a long time, this limit was not evenly applied across the network. Many users were able to follow far more than 1,000 per day. However, Twitter recently started to enforce this 1,000 per day limit on all accounts.
Maximum Followers: Unlimited
While Twitter place limits on how many people you can follow, there are currently no limits on how many can follow you. This explains why new accounts like Oprah surged to almost 500,000 followers in less than week. However, if Oprah wishes to follow all those people back, she’ll have to do it 1,000 people at a time.