Twannabe: hang out with the crowd of your Twitter hero

Written on 17th June 2008                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Wow, there’s a new trend going on in 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 Twannabe.

Reinier thinks that a good way to find new interesting people is checking out who your hero is following. I can see why, as the guys your hero is following might be the crowd you want to be associated with. Though I’m not sure though whether Twitter followers is a good filter. Imagine for example that your web hero is Jason Calacanis. Well, then I have a news flash for you. He has an auto follow script running and currently tracks the tweets of 28,007 people. Although the Twitter API allows Twannabe to work with only 2000 contacts, it’s still a lot of people to follow.

It does work though when you change the definition. Instead of tracking down the friends of an almost unreachable Web 2.0 millionaire, you might want to see who your friends are following. Than, all of a sudden, Twannabe becomes more useful. But to be honest with you, the ‘view all’ option of Twitter does the job as well. Twannabe just creates a fun experience around it.