The Disadvantages of Twitter
By Kefa Olang
Twitter has many advantages, including communicating with family and friends, catching up on your favorite celebrities and posting content such as photos. However, limitations, spamming and the social networking site's addictive power are common disadvantages many subscribers encounter on a daily basis.
Posting Limits
Twitter limits each tweet to 140 characters. Unlike some social networks, a tweet that exceeds 140 characters cannot be posted. In addition, you can only send a maximum of 1,000 tweets a day. Even retweets count as tweets and make up your daily total number of allowed posts. The daily count for tweets is broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals.
Follower Limitations
Twitter does not limit the number of followers that can follow you; however, accounts that have more than 2,000 followers are usually monitored for unlawful behavior. Once you have 2,000 followers, Twitter can limit the number of additional followers you can receive. For example, if you only have 100 people following you, you can't follow 10,000 people. "Churning" is a process that involves repeatedly following and un-following a large numbers of accounts. Accounts that do this are monitored because this pattern is considered a violation. Twitter also monitors accounts for "aggressive following," a process that involves following hundreds of accounts for no reason other than to garner attention for your account. Basically, Twitter does not encourage following other accounts for no specific reason.
Spamming
Spamming is one of the disadvantages of Twitter. Scammers create Twitter accounts to perform a variety of tasks such as posting links with unrelated tweets, posting duplicate updates, and providing links to websites that promote phishing practices and malware. As much as Twitter strives to protect subscribers from spammers, spamming is still a problem. Accounts verified for spamming are subject to permanent suspensions. Spamming violates privacy and security, which is the primary reason why Twitter won't tolerate it.
Addictive
Twitter can be addictive. As soon as you start posting tweets and see what your followers and the people you're following are saying, it becomes hard to walk away. It can become an obsession. How you choose to use Twitter is your prerogative, but be warned, it's easy to get distracted and find yourself spending hours on one conversation after another.
References
Writer Bio
Kefa Olang has been writing articles online since April 2009. He has been published in the "Celebration of Young Poets" and has an associate degree in communication and media arts from Dutchess Community College, and a bachelor's degree in broadcasting and mass communication from the State University of New York, Oswego.