Some of us in Nigeria have thrown suspicion at the doors of the government's Israeli internet espionage team, however, this turns out to be quite incorrect. At least for the time being. The blame lies fully with Twitter programmers, and they're not denying it either.

For anyone who's active on Twitter, it's difficult not to have noticed the recent weirdness all over the network. Not being able to tweet, inability to refresh timelines, and if you bother to check the details, you get "Twitter API rate limit for this account has been exceeded...". Some have have been outrightly suspended without knowing why. Well, Twitter has been gradually restricting third party applications, in order to release its own replacement apps, and now they also want to use the same technique to limit third party Twitter advertisers like me so that they can make more money through their Twitter "Promoted Tweets".

Since about September 2012, Twitter started switching all subscribers from version 1.0 of their Application Program Interface (API) to version 1.1 which has mostly been a pain to application developers, but the aspect which really affects average users got into full swing from March 5th, 2013. This troublesome aspect is the Rate Limits.

Twitter API Rate limits describe the number of times you can access particular features on Twitter, using a certain application within a given period of time. With the version 1.0 API, it was basically about 350 actions per hour for most features, but with the newer version 1.1 API, virtually everything is 15 actions in 15 minutes. Various applications are being ported to the new rates on at a time, and Twitter for BlackBerry just got its "Saka" moment. A lot of people are confused, some of us are angry, but the full ramifications of this change is yet to hit us.

THE REAL TROUBLE:
As the Rate Limits also affect refreshing of TLs, (ie: you can only refresh your timeline a couple of times times in 15 minutes) those of us who follow more than 1,000 handles on Twitter have to be very careful. If I refresh my timeline too many times in 1 minute, it means for the next 14 minutes, I can't view any new tweets.This affects trending topics also: refresh too many times in a few minutes, and you'll have to sit in "twitjail" till the completion of that 15-minute time-frame.

If you understand geek, you may read directly from Twitter via:

http://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting/1.1
http://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting/1.1/limits


SOLUTION:

1. WiFi: Most Twitter applications refresh automatically when connected to WiFi, and Twitter doesn't recognize that as one of the 15 actions carried out within that time limit. So, all I've been saying, get on Oxygen Broadband Network!

2. Using multiple applications to request the same feature of Twitter gives the number of applications used, multiplied by the number of actionable requests with the 15-minute window i.e: intermingling the use of Uber Social and Twitter for BlackBerry will allow 30 actions on the same Twitter feature within 15 minutes. Hyper-actively exploiting or abusing this loophole will get an account suspended. Use sparingly.

3. Accounts which are following thousands of followers have to unfollow most, or forever give up their home timeline for only their mentions. Have in mind also that following and unfollowing lots of handles at a time will get an account suspended. Tread with caution.

That's all folks. See ya in TwitJail...sooner or later anyway.