Please note

We recently released manage follows, a set of Twitter API v2 endpoints that have similar functionality to this one. The new version is currently in development and serves adequate access for the majority of developers on our platform. While elevated levels of access are coming soon, developers in need of higher levels of access should continue to use this endpoint along with the Twitter API v2 version.

POST friendships/create

Allows the authenticating user to follow (friend) the user specified in the ID parameter.

Returns the followed user when successful. Returns a string describing the failure condition when unsuccessful. If the user is already friends with the user a HTTP 403 may be returned, though for performance reasons this method may also return a HTTP 200 OK message even if the follow relationship already exists.

Actions taken in this method are asynchronous. Changes will be eventually consistent.

Resource URL¶

https://api.twitter.com/1.1/friendships/create.json

Resource Information¶

Response formats	JSON
Requires authentication?	Yes (user context only)
Rate limited?	Yes
Requests / 24-hour window	400 per user; 1000 per app

Parameters¶

Name	Required	Description	Default Value	Example
screen_name	optional	The screen name of the user to follow.		twitterdev
user_id	optional	The ID of the user to follow.		2244994945
follow	optional	Enable notifications for the target user.		true

Example Request¶

curl --request POST 
--url 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/friendships/create.json?user_id=2244994945&follow=true' 
--header 'authorization: OAuth oauth_consumer_key="YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY", oauth_nonce="AUTO_GENERATED_NONCE", oauth_signature="AUTO_GENERATED_SIGNATURE", oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1", oauth_timestamp="AUTO_GENERATED_TIMESTAMP", oauth_token="USERS_ACCESS_TOKEN", oauth_version="1.0"' 
--header 'content-type: application/json'

Example Response¶

{user-object,
  "status": {tweet-object}
}

For more detail, see the user-object definition and the tweet-object definition.