NOTE: If you are looking for what “Rate Limit Exceeded” means, click here to pass the fluff.
My initial use of Twitter was simply to let family and friends know what I was up to, as well as inform them of blog updates, however, I am increasingly enjoying what Twitter has to offer.
Communication with completely random strangers, most of which have something interesting to say, is much more enjoyable that I would have expected. Not only that, I’ve picked up so many useless nuggets of knowledge along the way – you know, stuff that you find really interesting but the rest of the world could care less about – that Twitter quickly became a method of finding new information on a daily basis.
The largest complaint I have with Twitter is the lack of threading. If one obtains an @ reply, pages and pages of messages may need to be viewed before ever seeing the message. Such behavior, while designed specifically to function in that manner, makes Twitter less user friendly.
Enter TweetDeck.
TweetDeck is an application that attempts to take your Twitter feed and break it down into multiple topics (such as your @ replies, direct messages, favorites) by utilizing the Twitter API. The TweetDeck developers have done so in a rather impressive fashion.
Overnight, Twitter simply became a service for me – almost a protocol – and TweetDeck became my interface of choice. Now I actually can use Twitter with ease and I can do so in the manner of my choosing. The best part – there was no major limitation that would prevent me from using the application. Well.. There is no major limitation with TweetDeck but there is ONE major with Twitter.
About 20 to 30 minutes into using TweetDeck this evening, I noticed the application kicking back a nasty little “Twitter Status” message saying “Rate Limit Exceeded”
How Odd I thought… I didn’t send too many many messages, what was going on?
The Twitter API only allows external applications to make 100 “calls” during a 60 minute period.
“Clients are allowed 100 requests per 60 sixty minute time period, starting from their first request. The rate limited is applied to both authenticated and unauthenticated requests. “
What exactly is a “call” to the API anyway? Just about anything that communicates to Twitter constitutes a call, except when a user posts and update (or direct message). Don’t get sneaky and think that you can have multiple applications open in order to sidestep the limit, you cannot. The limitation is on YOUR ID and not on a specific application.
As for ways around the API limit…. I don’t believe there are any. I wish there was, but that does not appear to be the case. The entrepreneur in me wonders if this is a potential source of revenue for Twitter or does the company set the API call at 100 per hour to keep system integrity stable.
While I am quite happy with TweetDeck thus far, I’m sure I will find application specific limitations eventually. Just know the “Rate Limited Exceeded” has nothing to do with the application and everything to do with the Twitter service.
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