Quick Comment

Twittercounter: Feedburner for Twitter

By Ernst-Jan Pfauth on June 12th, 2008

My co-editor Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten is a serial Internet entrepreneur. You know the type, he constantly comes up with fresh ideas and builds new stuff all the time. His latest project might just become another hit, as it touches an important part of the human being: vanity. The thing is, his new service, called Twittercounter, allows you to show off the number of your Twitter followers. It’s just a matter of typing in your Twitter username and copy/ paste the code that shows up.

Apart from the bragging part, Twittercounter is also the new Feedburner. Boris explains why: “At the first Next Web conference, Michael Arrington said he didn’t pay attention to pageviews anymore. For him, it was all about RSS readers. Back then, RSS had just became popular. That was a real eye-opener. From that day on, I have been trying to increase the number of RSS readers on my blogs. But recently, I asked my (editors note: 1449) Twitter followers why some of them hadn’t subscribed to the Next Web Blog RSS feed. I got a lot of replies from people, most of them saying they were happy enough with the blog’s Twitter feed. That was another eye-opener for me”. So with those eye-openers in mind, Boris started working on a Twitter mash-up. The result can be seen here.


Although some people might find it too vain to put the number of Twitter followers on their blog, I expect that a larger number of bloggers can’t resist the nice-looking blue thingy.

About the Author

Ernst-Jan Pfauth

Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

Discussion - 26 Comments/Pingbacks RSS feed for comments on this post

  1. Rick says June 12, 2008
    Reply

    That counter looks way too small for @scobleizer..

  2. Titanas says June 12, 2008
    Reply

    Cool and i agree with Robert. Counter is too small / blurry

  3. boris says June 12, 2008
    Reply

    I will try to make the text sharper. Anyone with experience in php gd and rendering pizel fonts?

  4. Huub Koch says June 12, 2008
    Reply

    Great Stoff Boris!

  5. Boris says June 12, 2008
    Reply

    Ok, found out more about the GD library. The image looks sharper now and I found a new font which works much better. Feedback welcome!

  6. Tobias Verhoog says June 13, 2008
    Reply

    Very nice idea Boris (again). But: although I have a blog and a twitter account I won’t be using it. For the same reason I’m not showing my feedburner count. I just don’t have enough followers/subscribers. It would be a little sad to have two buttons on my blog displaying: 20 twitter followers/2 feed subscribers.

    Request feature: use cheat mode to really show off and have 750 followers.

  7. Titanas says June 13, 2008
    Reply

    Much better.. i like the “t” twitterish logo / letter thing in front of the followers.

  8. Boris says June 13, 2008
    Reply

    @tobias: I can easily add that feature for you! I will just do a +100 thing in php for your account only…

    :-)

  9. web design company says June 13, 2008
    Reply

    Got it on my blog too…

  10. Mia says November 14, 2009
    Reply

    I love this button, it’s as if feedburner had a baby , but somehow, I believe you will enhance its appearance whereas feedburner wont . I def do like the twitter logo on there, it gives it a separate character ( persona, if u will ) and sets it apart from feedburner & I believe many users will prefer the twitter logo on it as well . Overall , you have done a fantabulous job on this Boris & did I mention : Ur UberKewl ! :))
    tweet tweet :)

  1. Twittercounter, el contador de Feedburner para Twitter | Bitperbit

    [...] Enlace | Twittercounter Vía | The Next Web [...]

  2. KillerStartups.com - Twittercounter.com - Popularity Promotion Widget

    Twittercounter.com – Popularity Promotion Widget…

    I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

  3. Twittercounter: Follower-Widget | Twitterdings

    [...] gestalten zu können und eigene Service auf der Twitter-Infrastruktur anzubieten. [ via: Twittercounter: Feedburner for Twitter ] function fbs_click(u,t) { void(window.open(‘http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php’+ [...]

  4. Digital Biographer™ » TwitterCounter.com: Vanity Publishing for Twitter users. Count me in!

    [...] word. Boris explains some of the rationale behind the growing importance of twitter followers at The Next Web Blog – and notes the important fact that a twitter feed is also a great way for people to follow a [...]

  5. Twittercounter, contador de followers tipo feedburner - esTwitter.com

    [...] Via: thenextweb.org [...]

  6. TwitterCounter Lists The Number Of Twitter Followers In A Similar Fashion As Feedburner’s FeedCount

    [...] Source: [1] TheNextWeb.org: Twittercounter: Feedburner for Twitter by Ernst-Jan Pfauth Sphere: Related [...]

  7. LB6Lounge

    [...] – ich jetzt endlich auch Schon seit ein paar Tagen wusste ich, dass einer der Autoren vom thenextweb-Blog jetzt eine Plattform, mit dem schön deskriptiven Namen TwitterCounter gelauncht hat, die nicht [...]

  8. News-Recycling am Wochenende | TechBanger.de

    [...] thenextweb stellt TwitterCounter vor, ein Tool das anzeigt, wie viele Follower ein Twitter-Nutzer hat. Ergänzend wird ein Button zur Verfügung gestellt, der im Feedburner Style erscheint und beispielsweise in Blogs eingebunden werden kann. Es sieht ganz so aus, als ob TwitterCounter in den Twitter-Fangemeinde gut ankommt. [...]

  9. Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten » OpenIdea: TwitterCounter.com

    [...] we launched Ernst-Jan published a short review on The Next Web Blog and I twittered it. That was enough to start an avalanche of blogposts, tweets and traffic to [...]

  10. TwitterCounter | Bakkel dot com

    [...] The Next Web [...]

  11. Twannabe: hang out with the crowd of your Twitter hero

    [...] the Next Web office: making Twitter mash-ups. Last week, co-editor Boris launched Twittercounter – Feedburner for Twitter – and a few hours ago, developer Reinier Ladan (@reinier) sent me a line about his mash-up [...]

  12. Preople: when the deadpool shimmers, try eBay

    [...] Starting a bunch of companies comes with success – like his first one, V3, and more recently, Twittercounter -, and failure. Today, we’ll discuss the [...]

  13. Twitter, what are YOU doing?

    [...] This causes a lot of frustration by many users, but especially with the people behind the many applications that are making use and rely on Twitter for their [...]

  14. TwitterRemote: see which Twitter users visit your site - The Next Web

    [...] with shares in several projects and companies. One of those projects is TwitterCounter. We launched TwitterCounter in June 2008 after we found out that more and more people were ignoring our RSS feed because they were getting [...]

  15. QuoraStats.com: Stats for Quora

    [...] June 2008 we launched a nice little experiment built on the Twitter API. We called it TwitterCounter. At first people [...]

  16. PHP Developer | Startupjobs

    [...] and Ernst-Jan wrote a post about us on TheNextWeb.com announcing the service. The title was “TwitterCounter: Feedburner for Twitter“. The first TwitterCounter badge was really ugly, as you can see on the right here. But we [...]

Post a Comment

Connect with Twitter
More in The Next Web (5 of 5 articles)