Increasing rate limit

[dko26]

Hi,

I was wondering if there was a process to getting the Rest API rate limits increased?

We use the friends/ids and followers/ids endpoints to profile people’s interests through the people they follow or who follow them (and also to see which interests the authenticated user and target user have in common) but hit the rate limits quite often.

Is there someone specific we should be talking to?

Thanks in advance!
David

[IgorBrigadir]

While rate limits for those are restrictive, friends/ids and followers/ids can get 5000 ids per call - are you hitting limits even with that? Getting rate limit increases / whitelisting doesn’t happen often - maybe you could get away with requesting fewer ids per user (max 5000 in 1 call). Since each endpoint has it’s own rate limit, and rate limits are per access token, each one of your app’s authenticated users should be able to make 15 calls in 15 minutes to both /friends/ids and followers/ids.

Also, you could fall back on friends/list and followers/list (retrieving 200 full user objects per call, not just ids)

Most likely thing you’ll need to fill out is “Special Permissions” Platform Support Form: https://support.twitter.com/forms/platform

[dko26]

Thanks for the response Igor! We are requesting 5,000 ids per call but this would take up a call even if the person had 5 or 300 friends as well and in our app there is a bit of jumping around profiles so this would quickly take up the allotted 15 calls/15 mins. I did not think of falling back on just getting the list of user objects though so I can use that for users with very small follower counts to alleviate some of the issues.

Also, thanks for the link to the form! I’ll definitely look into that too.

[andypiper]

As @IgorBrigadir says, yes, limits on those endpoints are low and there is a mechanism to request elevation via the form he posted a link to. However, I will caution that this is rarely granted.

If you’d like to talk to someone about getting increased data around followers, please contact Gnip via https://gnip.com/contact/

[dko26]

Thanks Andy, I will try those options and see where that leads.

[andypiper]