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Why too many Twitter limits? This is an FAQ on Twitter by users who want to know why they feel trapped when using the service. However, the company responded reasonably. Twitter limits relieve some of the strain on Twitter’s backend while also reducing downtime and error pages. They’ve put certain constraints on the account actions for the sake of reliability.
Despite the complaints, Twitter has evolved itself over the years from an SMS service for communicating with a small group to a widely used microblogging service with over 200 million monetizable daily active users worldwide. More number of users pushed Twitter to make up its mind about earlier limitations, leading to significant modifications that have made this social networking platform easier to use. Below, we have listed notable Twitter limits that can help you avoid being flagged as a spammer or a bot.
Twitter Maximum Character per Tweet
According to Twitter cofounders Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, the 140-character restriction are arbitrarily based on the 160-character SMS limit. Since Twitter was designed to be used as an SMS text medium for a limited group of people, they trimmed 20 characters off the username and went with 140. Additionally, they believed Twitter limits inspire people to be more creative, off the cuff, and at the moment.
In 2017, Twitter made a significant move by increasing the character count of Tweets from 140 to 280. “This is a small change, but it is a big move for us,” said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
When it comes to defining characters, most European letters and punctuation forms are counted as one, whereas each CJK glyph is counted as two. You can learn more about how characters are treated while creating tweets by clicking here.
Twitter Maximum Character per DMs, Profile Name, Bio, and Handle
Twitter doesn’t even go easy on direct messages, profile names, bios, or handles and has set a character limit on them.
A DM can include a maximum of 10,000 characters. So, when you have the stuff to do, get right to the point.
Many people choose to be known on Twitter by anything other than their real first or last name, such as Drake, who goes by the name Drizzy. But make sure you don’t go over the 50-character limit for your profile name.
Twitter limits your username, also known as your handle and beginning with @, to 15 characters.
And finally, you can’t be a chatterbox on your profile due to constrictive 160-character limits for your biography.
Read more about Twitter: 13 Twitter Bio Ideas to Attract More Followers
Twitter Maximum Daily Direct Messages
To avoid being swamped with spam, Twitter has set a daily limit of 1000 direct messages sent per account. You won’t be able to send any more DMs for the rest of the day if you surpass this limit.
Twitter Maximum Daily Tweets
Unlike Instagram, which does not have a limit on daily posts, Twitter puts a cap of 2,400 tweets per day on the platform (including retweets). Moreover, you won’t be able to tweet all 2,400 in one sitting because there are separate limits for semi-hourly intervals.
Read more about Twitter: How to Get More Retweets on Twitter
Twitter Following/Unfollowing Limits
Your timeline is the only thing you interact with when you’re on Twitter. So, to build up your desired community around yourself, follow up on your favorite topics, and curate your Twitter feed, you should modify your follow/unfollow strategy. On the other hand, Twitter has some limits in place to protect the platform from spammers and ensure that the service is reliable. Some of Twitter following and unfollowing limits are as below:
- Technically, each Twitter account can follow up to 400 accounts per day. Accounts with the blue verified badge on Twitter can exceptionally follow up to 1,000 accounts daily.
- You can follow an unlimited number of accounts overall. But once you hit 5,000 followers, you may need to wait until your account has more followers before you can follow more accounts. Indeed, there is no set number of followers that you must have, and Ad the number is determined using your unique follower-to-follower ratio.
- Twitter hasn’t stated a limit on how many people you can unfollow daily. However, if you don’t want your activities to be mistaken for a claim to get followers, it’s best to avoid unfollowing accounts aggressively. I’d suggest keeping unfollows at under 400 each day.
The rate at which you appear to be following/unfollowing can be regarded as abusive. So, it may result in your account’s suspension. As a result, we strongly advise to avoid:
- Increasing one’s own follower count by mass following and then unfollowing.
- Duplicating the followers of another account via automation.
- Using third-party services or apps that claim to increase your social media following.
Read more about Twitter:How to Get More Twitter Followers [Ultimate Guide]
Twitter List Limits
With 500 million tweets sent every day, there’s a high probability of missing top tweets of a topic. Lists, a targeting tool offered by Twitter, let you modify, organize, and prioritize the Tweets that pop up in your timeline and stay on top of the most important conversations. However, Twitter has placed some restrictions on lists, which you should be aware of.
- Per account, 1000 lists are allowed.
- Per list, 5000 accounts are allowed.
- List names can’t be longer than 25 characters, and they can’t start with a number.
Twitter Media Length/Size Limits
Although Twitter is a text-based platform, you have a better chance of stopping scrollers and encouraging them to look at your content if you include an accompanying image or a video based on the Twitter algorithm. To ensure that the platform runs smoothly and uniformly on all devices, Twitter has set some limits on the length, size, and format of the media shared on the platform.
- The maximum filesize for Tweet Video is 512MB. If you have a video file larger than 512MB, we recommend that you lower the resolution.
- The default video length is 140 seconds (2 minutes and 20 seconds)
- Twitter videos should have a minimum resolution of 32 x 32 pixels and a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1200 or 1200 x 1900 pixels.
- Supported video formats on the Twitter mobile app are MP4 and MOV and MP4 with H264 format with AAC audio on the web. If the video isn’t in a supported format, it’ll notify you.
- Twitter limits photos and animated GIFs to 5MB on mobile and 15MB on the web.
- Twitter supports only GIF, JPEG, and PNG files; BMP, TIFF, and other file formats are unacceptable.
- Users can’t tweet animated GIFs with multiple images.
- Attachments such as photos, GIFs, and videos do not count towards the character limit in a Tweet.
What Happens If You Go over a Limit?
Twitter’s reaction differs based on how far you’ve gone over your limit. Usually, they’ll notify you with an error message indicating which limit you’ve exceeded. Then they’ll restrict your actions for a limited time if you’ve exceeded a time-based limit (such as Direct Messages or Tweets) or lock your account if you violate Twitter Rules or Terms of Service, such as through aggressive behavior.
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