The Next Web

Twannabe: hang out with the crowd of your Twitter hero

Written on June 17, 2008 – 7:30 am
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.

I hope you like that post!

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Jason Calacanis, reinier ladan, twannabe, twitter, twittercounter

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Twittercounter: Feedburner for Twitter

Written on June 12, 2008 – 4:24 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

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.

Feedburner, rss, twitter, twittercounter

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