Twitter Not Addressing Follow Glitch
UPDATE 8/10/09 Seems obvious from increasing notes to the link below that the problem is widespread still and, worse, that Twitter has either closed tickets submitted with no action or simply not responded. Going into a weekend, that is not too swift. Though Twitter is free it clearly depends heavily on its users for its full value. I am tempted to suggest that people send messages @ev (the CEO of Twitter, perhaps with a copy @ your most favored news outlet).
UPDATE 8/9/09 AM Randall’s long comment below should be read as context for this post. I have not yet tried to follow today, but I am definitely not convinced that the problem is solved. As to what Twitter is or is not doing to address it, I am also at a loss. Please add comments that indicate if you are having success or to offer insight on the problem.
EARLIER UPDATE: Still able to follow but people are still reporting a problem.
EARLIEST UPDATE: Just followed ONE person successfully. Please report your experience in a comment. When I get reports from a total of three I will take the “not” out of the title.
Twitter has been receiving complaints from many users that they are unable to follow persons whose updates they wish to include among those they regularly read.
CLICK HERE TO READ TWITTER USERS ON PROBLEMS OF FOLLOWING
It is hard to imagine all the problems Twitter would have as a fundamentally user-driven utility with milions and millions of members. That it has taken more than a week for Twitter to address this problem is probably symptomatic of growing pains.
In any case I am among those who plays by the rules and cannot perform this basic action. I figure the best I can do is flag the problem and see if the Web can work some magic and elicit a response. I will happily update when that moment comes.
Stephen Hultquist said,
July 8, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Stephen,
Yes, this is pretty ridiculous. I’ve seen this issue for a number of weeks, and the responses I get from Twitter range from “it’s working as designed” to “you haven’t hit a limit, let me know if you have any issues” to “we can’t tell you the limits for security reasons.”
So yes, it’s crazy and ironic that Twitter will not engage with its users.
Thanks for the post.
@shultquist
http://twitter.com/shultquist
stephencrose said,
July 8, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Glad to have this comment. I hope some MSM media folk find this and help us make something of it. The options they suggest to you amount to a Catch 22 worthy of a Kafka short story.
dustin said,
July 8, 2009 at 7:18 pm
this has been going on for a week i cant follow people back ive put in 15 requests it takes 10 hrs just for a response and then nothing is done or it is just closed and not looked at
Tom said,
July 8, 2009 at 7:27 pm
This has become a frustrating nightmare that has me literally at the point of closing my twitter account now for how ridiculous this actually is!
I can post tweets just fine, but whenever I try to follow someone, or even delete and remove someone from my follow list, absolutely nothing happens! It’s like twitter has completely frozen and locked up my follow list and will not provide any help for getting around this problem!
Why should you twitter if you aren’t allowed to follow people yourself?
VERY frustrated!
@RoCk_ThE_BaSs
Randall W. Haws said,
July 8, 2009 at 9:38 pm
First, Stephen I totally dig your blog, just found it today searching on the Twitter reduced following limit issue. As with all most of your readers I am highly frustrated and experiencing similar problems/issues.
I am developer/programmer and would like to comment on some observations discovered through my own experience on Twitter with my @randallhaws account. I have written custom PHP scripts that leverage the Twitter API for managing my followers and friends. Here’s what’s going on for the most part for those that have more than 2,500 followers/friends.
1) For about 8-10 days now, if I follow between 400-500 new followers (or follow attempts) per day I reach the limit, which is contrary to API documentation. This is very similar for both API and via the web browser on Twitter.com.
2) It appears that my following limits, API or via the Twitter.com site, still increment/decrement for blocked, suspended, and nonexistent Twitter users. In fact, this has recently trickled down to the DM’s as well for a great deal of 20,000+ followers/friends Twitter accounts (like mine). I actually have 9 DM’s that are mysteriously unable to be replied to, deleted, or viewed – even when scripted specifically through a custom PHP script connecting directly to the Twitter API on my account’s behalf.
3) My custom PHP scripts connecting to the Twitter API actually work better and are more reliable with properly returned error results than when doing the same actions via the Twitter.com website. I rarely ever use the Twitter.com website now to follow/unfollow or mess with DM’s. For example, in my scripts I placed unnecessary and verbose coding so I can check my API limit, see if a followed/unfollowed user was suspended/blocked/nonexistent, etc. as well as perform the appropriate action based on this information in an effort to avoid this bad tallying of my specific following limit counter.
4) Even more disturbing and irritating is the fact that once I find a supposed solve for something, it inherently adversely affects something else. It’s a moving target that I am apparently not savvy enough to hit with any consistency or repeatable observation (this thing they call a scientific fact or simply proof).
5) I am working on open-sourcing my PHP scripts to the Twitter API system so others may also use them on their own sites/domains to find out what the heck is going on here and if perhaps this is a truly global bug/issue.
My suspicion, and this is purely hypothetical in discussion, is that it’s much worse and this is not an isolated problem globally, but an internal Twitter big brother monitoring system that evaluates all Twitter traffic (whether API or web related) and through a pseudo A.I. of sorts changes the rules by individual Twitter account by overt arbitrary and subjective means. I would submit for evaluation by the collective minds of like-minded individuals that if this were true, it is over the borderline and completely unethical and unprofessional, not to mention an invasion of unfair perpetuated practices.
I guess I expect too much for my free Twitter service. I’m working diligently to figure this one out, but I am not optimistic. I’m very much motivated to get my scripts debugged and open-sources as soon as possible. Stay tuned. My only hope and power is somehow increasing my knowledge and wisdom on the subject and outsmarting the unknowns.
stephencrose said,
July 9, 2009 at 6:01 am
Hi Randall …
This seems to me a most valid approach. Well beyond me technically but well-explained. It justifies retaining the title until there is a solution that works for everyone. We may be in entirely new territory. That is maybe Twitter has unleashed a process which is inherently impossible to control because of its interactive nature and massive expansion. Unless the users themselves are able to somehow resolve issues that come up. That seems to be what you and perhats more of us are trying to do. Thanks. S
Stephanie said,
July 9, 2009 at 9:26 am
Yes, I have been like this for over two weeks and relly 3-4. I have never received a response nor an apology. I have lost 5000 followers and following only 14 currently.(at one point I was following over 7000. One night poof–I woke to find I was following 0 people and I had lost about 2500 followers over night…please. This has been ongoing and I am VERY angry. I spent hours of dedication building my list and rapport with friends and followers. I am about ready to walk away and find someone to create another Twitterville ; ) One that is dependable and one with customer service a top priority on the list!
Stephanie said,
July 9, 2009 at 9:32 am
P.S. If anyone is aware of a program like Twitter out there PLEASEEEE let me know! I loved Twitter, now I hate going on daily to see the issue unresolved yet again, another day!
Stephanie said,
July 9, 2009 at 9:41 am
Sorry here is my url to see what I mean. Twitter counter has documentation and proof. Thanks twitter counter ; )
Stephanie said,
July 9, 2009 at 9:59 am
http://twittercounter.com/SoTravelNow This is not even accurate now! What the heck are they up to? Please enlighten me Twitter!
Stephen Hultquist said,
July 9, 2009 at 10:05 am
Randall,
I think that there is some validity to what you’re saying, and have observed similarly myself. If you’d like help debugging those scripts, let me know; I may be able to put some time towards it since I’ve been considering building similar functions.
I’m not sure whether it’s intended or simply ignorant application of limits that shouldn’t be placed in the first place, but regardless, it’s clear that something within the Twitter system programming is causing these issues.
Best,
ssh
Brandi said,
July 10, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I signed up for twitter today and I cant follow anyone. After 2 hours of thinking there was something wrong with me, i see the site is jank and isnt even responding to its loyal users. Why should I even bother w the headache of another wacj website. Thanks twitter for wasting my time!
Bryan White said,
July 10, 2009 at 2:33 pm
My account just randomly added the 6 people that i added at 830 this morning. I am still unable to allow notifications for those people….And still no response from support!!!
Randall W. Haws said,
July 11, 2009 at 1:01 pm
As promised, I have released my Open-Source TwitterManager web application. It’s a BETA vs1.0 release, but is fairly stable and outputs some details when and why stuff is not working as intended via the Twitter API.
The Tweet: http://twitter.com/randallhaws/status/2586490377
The Package Link: http://rhaws.com/TwitterManager1.0.zip
You just have to unzip this, read the instructions and readme text files, and upload to your website that runs PHP 5 or later and start checking it out and discovering why you can’t follow, unfollow, block, etc. as well as automate following/unfollowing of custom lists of Twitter users you define.
I hope by sharing this with the public we can archive as much data about what’s going on here to provide the solution to Twitter instead of waiting for one to be provided.
In addition, these batch automated processes should greatly decrease the amount of time you have to manually clickity-click around on the Twitter.com website. Nothing is better than plopping in a list of 500 users you wish to follow/unfollow/block and clicking a button and forgetting about it until morning to see the results of the batched process, which should reveal why or why not following limits are a moving target and so on and vary by Twitter user account.
TwitterManager 1.0 BETA release - Automated Batch Processing for your Twitter Account | Truths Behind Illusions said,
July 11, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[...] A good background discussion as to why I have created such a web application can be found here on a great blog site by Stephen C. Rose: http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/twitter-not-addressing-follow-glitch/ [...]
Ortwin Oberhauser said,
July 13, 2009 at 2:11 am
I too not understand what is going on by Twitter, why they not answer any questions to this issue for more than one week.
I am too among those who plays by the rules and can sometimes not even follow back who follow me. Even once my account was suspended for one hour without any reason, somehow this behavior makes me think, maybe I was wrong spending so much time in twitter within the last month?
Let’s hope Twitter will soon give answer and will fix the problems.
Stay tuned!
Ortwin Oberhauser
follow me
Yvonne Ginder said,
July 21, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Yes I’m having problems with my limit. Now twitter said that I was at my limit, which I don’t understand? you offer me to belong to get tons of twitters sign up, well I did, now you tell me I’m at my limit, and which would only last 24 hours. Well it’s been longer like 3days,and you still keep sending me new twitters to follow then I try to respond and again it says I’m at my limit. Help me to understand whats going? and please left my limit remove it thank-you.