On occasion we at BlogFrog throw Twitter parties. I bet many of you have either helped us host (thanks again!) or have participated (big thanks to you too!).

Don't know what a Twitter party is? The brief explanation is an hour long event on Twitter using the same hashtag. The host asks a series of questions (say 10 over the course of the hour) and the people participating answer. Sometimes there are prizes, sometimes we donate to a charity in your name, and sometimes they are just for the fun of getting together with like-minded people on Twitter to share tips, tricks, ideas and to talk.

During the last two parties that I threw, I had two of my hosts get put into Twitter jail! Neither of them were familiar with the term, so I thought I would turn to our blog and share with everyone just what Twitter jail is and what you do to get there (aka, how to avoid getting thrown in the slammer).

One gets thrown into Twitter jail for doing one of the following (taken directly from Twitter's help page):

• Updates: 1,000 per day. The daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals. Retweets are counted as updates.
• Direct Messages: 250 per day.
• Changes to Account Email: 4 per hour.
• Following (daily): Please note that this is a technical account limit only, and there are additional rules prohibiting aggressive following behavior. You can find detailed page describing following limits and prohibited behavior on the Follow Limits and Best Practices Page. The technical follow limit is 1,000 per day.
• Following (account-based): Once an account is following 2,000 other users, additional follow attempts are limited by account-specific ratios. The Follow Limits and Best Practices Page has more information.