I'm looking at some Twitter apps to try to analyse what type of networks people in education develop using Twitter.
One I'm trying out is FriendorFollow. You put in any Twitter username (no passwords needed and a nice simple interface) and it provides 3 pieces of information for that username:
- A list of users you follow who don't follow you back
- A list of your fans - those who follow you that you don't follow back
- A list of friends - those who you follow and who follow you back
The results give thumbnails for each user; mouse over on a thumbnail gives that user's profile. The number in each list is also given.
It's a useful and effective app. The response is usually reasonably quick but can be much slower for people with large numbers of followers and friends. Some people find it useful for managing their followers.
So far so good. But there are some problems. For each list mentioned above a CSV file with a line for each user may be downloaded. Potentially a very useful facility. But for each user only two numbers are given:
- Followers_count - this is (reasonably) the sum of fans and friends, and is meant to be the same as the followers number in Twitter
- Friends_count - this is the sum of those you follow but don't follow you back plus friends, and is meant to be the number that Twitter calls "Following", i.e. simply the number you follow
So there is some confusion about terminology but the above explanation clarifies this (I hope).
More importantly against these numbers is a "status date" which I take to be the date when the numbers were obtained from Twitter. This date is NOT the date when the numbers for your input username are obtained. The numbers have been obtained some time in the past; they can be up to two years out of date. So for most purposes they are quite useless.
A couple of other small things about this app. Putting in a non-existent user gives a system error message; it doesn't say the username doesn't exist. Also, surprisingly, the Twitter account for FriendorFollow seems dormant at present.
Overall a very useful app but be careful about some of the detail in the numbers
More importantly against these numbers is a "status date" which I take to be the date when the numbers were obtained from Twitter. This date is NOT the date when the numbers for your input username are obtained. The numbers have been obtained some time in the past; they can be up to two years out of date. So for most purposes they are quite useless.
A couple of other small things about this app. Putting in a non-existent user gives a system error message; it doesn't say the username doesn't exist. Also, surprisingly, the Twitter account for FriendorFollow seems dormant at present.
Overall a very useful app but be careful about some of the detail in the numbers
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