Important: Please Help Get Twitter For Xpenser Working Again
Comments(5)
We’ve run into a limit with our Twitter support – due to Twitter limits we can’t add any new Twitter users to Xpenser until we get 1168 more followers. Please take a moment to read the details below and more importantly follow xpn on Twitter and ask your friends to do the same. This is not a scam (really!) – we just need to get the number of followers to match or exceed the number of users we follow in order to allow new users to sign on.
Here’s the story: some time ago Twitter implemented a limit of 2000 on the number of users anyone can follow, presumably to curb spam and possibly to help with scaling. The only way to exceed the 2000 limit is to have more than 2000 followers, as Alex Payne of Twitter informed us in an email just now:
Sorry, there’s nothing we can do about that limit. As long as more people are following you than you’re following, you’ll be fine. But even our admin accounts are subject to that limit.
Why do we need to follow so many people? Xpenser works by allowing users to “direct message” our xpn user. A direct message is a private message exchanged between two users.
The only way for you guys to direct message Xpenser is for Xpenser to follow you, because Twitter does not allow you to direct message users that don’t follow you.
So there we have it – we must follow users in order for them to communicate with us, and we can’t follow more than 2000 users until more that 2000 users follow us. So we need get from our current 831 followers to 2000 real quick!
We’ll be implementing an update that requires new users to follow us in order to register their Twitter account with us so we can keep things even in the future. But we first have to get to the 2000 follower mark.
Please take a moment to follow the xpn user and retweet this message so we can get to 2000 quickly.
Thank you!
Can’t believe you’re the only company that has fallen foul of this Twitter rule
Andrew, we’re popular
[...] you may know we’ve run into a Twitter limit on how many accounts we can allow into Xpenser. Asking nicely worked, and you helped spread the word and get about 500 new users following [...]
Go to a site like TweepMe.com and sign up for their service. It’ll automatically link the twitter.com/xpn with other users. In a few days you’l have as many as 1,000 ‘followers.’ Haven’t used it myself but know people who have. Works as advertised.
It sounds like a shady thing to do, but it’s perfectly legal and acceptable by Twitter’s terms.
I’d suggest you institute a policy requiring anyone wishing to tweet their xpenses to follow xpenser. Give users 5 days to follow xpn before you drop them from your follow list. It’s only fair. Anyone who wants to use the service should “pay” for it by following xpn.