Updating # of followers for a big list of Twitter accounts?

Question

The functionality I'm trying to implement is used in a site called Wefollow ( http://tiny.cc/iozHC ):

On this WeFollow each account is checked for

• # of followers

• # of statuses

How can reliably update the information for each account without bumping into the 2000 queries/hour limit imposed by Twitter?

I'm trying to build a directory and update the same details. How can I deal with this?

Help would be very much appreciated.

---

EDIT: I'm trying to understand how that site works, not promoting it. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

Answer 1

If there's a hard limit, there's a hard limit. I would do this by putting all accounts in a rotating queue and updating them in that order up to a given maximum. If you can't cover all accounts, that's too bad. You could also calculate activity values based on deltas per user and prioritise the updating of those users. If a user hasn't changed in a month then there's no point checking that user more frequently than every week. Likewise, if a given user is very active, they can be pushed to the front of the queue.

BTW I would say this is verging on not programming related.

Answer 2

You can apply to have your IP address and account whitelisted which will increase your rate limit to 20,000/hour if you are approved. (http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Rate-limiting)