Twitter doesn’t want you to follow everyone, no matter how important the service is to the betterment of human kind.  And it has nothing to do with up-time.  They are protecting you from the bad people.

According to “Ginger,” (the person the post is credited to) on Twitter’s forum relating to what they term as best practices, you have to adhere to basic rules of decency…I mean guidelines.  Basically, they don’t want you to become annoying to legitimate users of the system and run everyone off, lest Google be serious about buying them (was that out loud)?  

The Twitter imposed ceiling is 2000.  The number of people you couldn’t possibly be following and still be serious about it.  And if I were using Twitter to keep up with friends’ 140 character soliloquies, then this would make sense.  However, I am not that guy.

Here is what Ginger seems to be saying.  Don’t be over aggressive in who you follow, and don’t un-follow excessive numbers of people.  If you are following 1000 people, but only have 50 or so followers, then you are suspicious.  If you add hundreds of people a day, and un-follow hundreds a day, well then, you are suspicious.

In case you are not familiar, this is what automated apps do to help you get large numbers of followers quickly.  While it is a great way to grow followers, it can get your account suspended.  It’s not that you can’t automate your account, but automation is exactly what the bad guys do.

When it’s okay to automate.  Third-party apps have been developed to help facilitate posting to Twitter, and this is perfectly fine.  For example, Twitter Feed automates the process of pushing a recent Facebook update to Twitter.  In this example, the application ties into the Twitter API and automatically updates your Twitter account without your having to manually re-enter the same information.

When it’s NOT okay to automate.  Setting up bulk follows based on search or keyword terms, or bulk un-follows in large numbers.  Posting spam links, sending duplicate links, using redirects within links and promotion of affiliate offers is generally frowned upon and could lead to suspension.

Again, these are just guidelines, and I have personally come across several accounts that seem very suspicious, regardless of what Ginger thinks.  So, they are not cracking down on general bad manners, just truly egregious behavior.

The best way to avoid getting in Twouble is to keep your follow to following ratio below 1.5 to 1.  In other words, if you are following 150 people, you should have at least 100 followers.  And should you find yourself hurtling toward the 2000 limit, be sure you are bringing a bunch of friends with you.  You’ll need plenty of momentum to crash the glass.