You’ve Reached the Maximum Number of People that Can be in Your Circles
Posted by
Rick Noel on Thu, Mar 08, 2012 @ 11:25 AM
Like Facebook, Google+ limits the number of people and pages that you can have in your Google+ circles, though there appears to be no limit to how many others can have you in their circles. Have you hit this Google+ limit and if so, what did you do?
You’ve Reached the Maximum Number of People that Can be in Your Circles
How many of you have gotten this dreaded message from Google+? No doubt you other type A personalities, a Google+ hoarder or both. As you might already know, Google limits the amount of people/businesses that you can have in your circles to 5000. In my excitement and engagement on Google+, while enjoying the quality, niche user base and quality content on this new Google+ social platform, I had not really given any thought to hitting limits.
But then it came, this part Sunday morning at 1 am, the dreaded messages from Google+, in a red box at the top of the Google+ interface like the one at the top of this post, "You’ve reached the maximum number of people that can be in your circles at this time." What? For real!?? Argh!
I guess that I should not be surprised, since Facebook also limits the number of friends that you have to 5000, but for some reason, in the brave new Google+ world, I thought that things would be different in most regards. I guess drinking too much from the Google+ Cool Aid fountain has made me a little circle drunk.
What’s interesting is that it that your profile can be in many more than 5000 different Google+ user’s circles but you can only have 5000 Google+ profiles or pages across all your circles. Wow, I still can’t get over that. I wonder if the 5000 limitation is based on technology limitations or some kind of Google philosophy and/or guiding principle? In any event, for me at least, it takes some of the shine off this Google+ Internet marketing mousetrap and will require some clean up of my circles so that when somebody that I admire adds me to their circles, I can add them back if I so choose.
If you had not gotten this message too, there is a good chance that you would not have discovered this post as you may be seeking solutions or work-around to this limitation 5000 entities in your Circles limitation in Google+. What is strange is that my profile states that I have 4967 in my circles? That is what is stays on my profile page: In Rick’s circles (4966). But when I click on the circles icon and go to the circles page and click on your circles, it says 5000? Why the discrepancy?
What happened to the other 34 slots? Even when I remove some individuals from circles to free up a spot for someone I want to add in their place, still Google gives me the dreaded “You’ve reached the maximum number of people that can be in your circles at this time.” Am I in some kind of penalty box for my over-zealous circling, like some kind of underfed Internet marketing vulture?
After a Google Search for this message turned up nearly nothing (see SERPs below), I decided to blog about it as a means to connect with other like minded individuals in hopes that we might somehow find a solution to this 5000 people (and business page) limitation to Google+ circles. If you want to connect with me on facebook, I can be found at https://www.facebook.com/RickCNoel. On Facebook, I have space to spare 
Leave a comment below if you have gotten the dreaded “You’ve reached the maximum number of people that can be in your circles at this time.” Let us know if you have found a work around or if you know of Google+ plans to relax this limitation. Wouldn’t that be a great way to attract the most engaging of Facebook users over to Google+?;-)
If you found value in this post, please like eBiz ROI on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ebizroi(or click like button directly below) and Follow eBiz ROI on Twitter @eBizROI (or click the Twitter follow button directly below) to stay connected.