Important Twitter Limitations You May Not Be Aware Of

Recently, Twitter has announced that it's planning to increase the number of characters from 140 to 10,000. This is something that has caused users to complain because they feel that this new limit is going to make Twitter lose its identity. For better of for worse, the 140 character limitation is the only limit the social network has. Below are some Twitter limitations you may not know existed.

Usernames can only be 15 characters long
Usernames on Twitter can have a maximum of 15 characters, and that does not include the @ symbol. You can naturally add letters, numbers, and underscores. You could even create a username with a single character if there were any available.

Send a maximum of 1,000 messages a day
Since Twitter allowed users to send direct message to anyone, it provided a limit of 1,000 message for its users to avoid spam.

You can't tweet more than 2,400 times a day
A lot of people spend a lot of time on Twitter, but it's actually hard to believe that someone would send tweet more than 2,400 times a day. To pull that off, you would have to send 100 tweets an hour without sleeping. This is Twitter's another way to avoid spam.

You can't follow more that 2,000 users without limits
This one might just be interesting on of them all. This is probably the only limit of Twitter that you may possibly run into. Once you follow 2,000 users, you can only have 10% more followers than the people you follow. In other words, if you want to follow more than 2,000 people, you have more than 1,800 followers. When you reach a limit, Twitter will let you know with an error message telling you that.

Twitter won't allow to create more than 1,000 lists
Lists are very useful tool when you want to get information about a certain something of read tweets from a particular circle of people because you don't have enough time to read the entire timeline. However, it is difficult to believe that someone would have 1,00 lists (or even 50 for that matter). This seems like a method to avoid getting too much attention from other users by using dirty tactics.

Every account can only follow 5,000 users total
If you have somehow manage to follow 5,000 users, you will face limits as to the number of new users you can follow. Every Twitter account is open to limits, even API and high profile accounts. Twitter will not allow you to follow more than 1,000 accounts per day, and the social network says it's a technical limit to prevent flagrant abuse from spam accounts.

Even though Twitter says you can't follow more than 5,000 accounts, there is a way to work around that. You will need to wait until your have more followers before you can follow anyone else.

Organize Your Twitter Feeds by Creating Lists

One very useful feature in Twitter that seems to be left behind is its ability to create Lists. Lists allow you to organize your Twitter feed in order for you to see tweets coming from people with specific interests and expertise, or whatever reason you might want to categorize into a group.

Twitter Lists are useful because they let you view tweets from a select group of users. It's almost like alternative Twitter logins, where you are following a unique set of people. For example, you can create a list of your real-life friends so that when you want to socialize with these group of people via Twitter, you can avoid the hassle of scanning through other non-friend tweets in your main Twitter feed.

Here are two important things you need to know about Twitter Lists:

1.     You don't have to be following a user in order to add him or her to a list.

2.     Tweets from your lists do not show up in your main or primary feed.

If you're interested on some Twitter accounts and would like to read them from time to time, but not to the point where you want to see every single tweet they make on your primary feed, you can bundle them into a list and then you can visit that list anytime you find it convenient to check out their tweets. Yeah, I know, that's really cool. Check out below some examples of Twitter Lists that you might find applicable to you:

News sources	This is a common kind of list that you can create for those group of Twitter accounts who make it a habit to tweet news. You can create Lists with local news, global news, or you can even be more specific, such as technology or science.
Friends and family	Show them how much you really care by creating a group just for them so that their tweets will not get lost in your Twitter feed.
Colleagues or co-workers	Always be in the inner circle when it comes to the latest buzz and happenings in your workplace by creating a central place to check it all.
Competitors	This is ideal for those in the business industry -- add accounts in your private list to easily check on the latest tweets and secretly find out some sneak peek or "behind-the-scenes" of your competitor(s).
Topics of interest	Depending on your interests and hobbies, you may also follow bloggers, sports teams, authors, artists, or other people who tweet about a particular interest to you. You may also consider making a list for funny tweets or a private list of #NSFW (not safe for work) tweeters.

And finally, here's how you can create your own Twitter List:

First, sign in to your Twitter account. By the way, these steps are basically the same whether you'll be logging in via Web browser or mobile app to use Twitter. Once you're signed in, click the gear icon in the upper right section then select Lists. On the page that opens, click the Create new list button located on the right. A pop-up box will appear asking you to name the list, provide a description, then mark it either Public or Private. Fill out these fields then hit theSave list button to proceed.

On the next page is a clean blank list -- no members, no followers, no tweets, nothing. Now, use the search box featured front and center to look for people that you would like to add on your list. By the way, you can always add or remove members on a particular list as you use Twitter.

As you use Twitter and discover new or other Twitter accounts that you would like to add to your list, simply click the gear icon that appears on any user, and then select Add or remove from lists. It would be better to look through the list of people you are currently following to see if you want to group any of them into a list. You can also search for a hashtag and then add the resulting users who pop up to make a list. Another way is to look at other users' accounts to see who they follow or who follows them, and then find more people that you can add to your lists.

Organizing your Twitter feeds is so much easier with the help of the Lists feature. Don't tire yourself with cluttered tweets -- organize your Twitter feeds and you'll definitely thank yourself later on.

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