The Next Web

Twittercounter: Feedburner for Twitter

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. Twittercounter: Feedburner for TwitterIt’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.

Twittercounter: Feedburner for Twitter

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.


  • That counter looks way too small for @scobleizer..
  • Cool and i agree with Robert. Counter is too small / blurry
  • I will try to make the text sharper. Anyone with experience in php gd and rendering pizel fonts?
  • Great Stoff Boris!
  • 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!
  • 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.
  • Much better.. i like the "t" twitterish logo / letter thing in front of the followers.
  • @tobias: I can easily add that feature for you! I will just do a +100 thing in php for your account only...

    :-)
  • Got it on my blog too...
  • 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 :)
blog comments powered by Disqus
 


TwitterCounter