4 ms·

Show HN: Bored last night. 3 hour project: Your Most Followed Followers

46 points by mittermayr 15y ago

jarin 15y ago
It looks like I managed to follow several huge celebrities back when they auto-followed you back :)
- mittermayr 15y ago
  :) yeah exactly! i was wondering if I should add an option, to not include (or maybe hide) accounts who obviously show high auto-follow-back rates, i.e. a low score follower/following
citricsquid 15y ago
Apparently a few large followed accounts follow me that I wasn't aware of, neat application... An idea I've wanted to do for a long time (but isn't technically possible) is to analyse the reach a user has. For example, when I tweet normally it is sent out to my ~520 followers, but what about when my tweet is retweeted? What about how many are active and the chances that they saw the tweet? It would be really interesting to see stuff like that. Side note, can you explain "VIP Factor?" I assume it's where you position in their follows (longer that they've followed the higher the score)?
- mittermayr 15y ago
  VIP factor currently is just: how many followers does a user have : how many does he follow? but this needs tweaking, since, if a person follows 10000 and has 10000000 followers, you are still a nobody, being followed by them. i guess i need to figure out a curve for that. anyways, thanks for the kind words.
- cnxsoft 15y ago
  That's what Klout is doing, analyzing the social reach of a user.
mittermayr 15y ago
thanks guys for checking this out. i wanted to post this before going to lunch (european time), and now this. there's hundreds of people on the site right now, and i can't go to lunch, uugghg, internet!! :) p.s. feedback is heavily welcome, i am happy to add a few things and maybe post the whole thing on github or something if anyone needs a quickndirty starter for twitter integration apps.
mittermayr 15y ago
would you say people would pay a dollar to see their top 50 followers? just curious...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mittermayr 15y ago
also, if anyone is curious, all UI is done by bootstrap (https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap), added some simple php for the twitter crunching (using twitteroauth) and that's it.
- tibbon 15y ago
  Can you put it on Github? There's one thing I'd like to see how you're doing it logic-wise.
  - mittermayr 15y ago
    ask, what part?
mittermayr 15y ago
i've decided to live-stream my analytics account, so you can see yourself making an impact :) http://livestream.com/mittermayr http://livestream.com/mittermayr
AshleysBrain 15y ago
Great work! Always wanted something like this and wondered why Twitter didn't have an option to show you this kind of info. Nice idea.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  right?? i couldn't find this anywhere, despite a trillion twitter service out there. i built it for myself, to see some more details, but bootstrap is a great thing to make a little script look awesome in an instant, so i figured why not post it.
helen842000 15y ago
Hey, I'm part way through building a very similar project with a few extra paid for features! Congrats on getting your site launched in such a short time! It's an interesting aspect to analyse your own network.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  go for it, just make sure you let those pay who do this professionally, and those who are curious should have access to full functionality albeit a limited set of result rows maybe or something like it. i really hated all these twitter services who make me sign up do a bunch of things and then tell me to pay or not see any results. let us know when you go live :)
  - helen842000 15y ago
    Will do! Mine is more from the angle of looking at most followed people in your secondary network (friends of friends) finding 'popular' and relevant new people to follow as I think the Twitter site is terrible at helping you to find & follow quickly. I agree that for the most part these services should be free and simple and the paid features are to help the pros.
PeterWhittaker 15y ago
Cool, but one quibble: You need to make it obvious right up front that cookies must be enabled on your domain for this to work (not sure why this is needed, but...). I block all cookies by default and got all the way to the end of the process only to discover nothing. Nothing! (Kudos for handling failure gracefully, at least the app didn't blow up, everything looked fine - but anti-kudos for not detecting that the process wasn't working.) When I enabled cookies on fruji, ta-da, it worked fine. Turns out I'm not very important, sigh. :->
- mittermayr 15y ago
  will do so in a second ... thanks!
- herval 15y ago
  I imagine MOST webapps out there are basically broken for you, no?
pors 15y ago
Very nice! You could improve it by filtering out accounts that follow a large number of others. Many of the real VIPs have many followers, but don't follow that many themselves.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  exactly, responded to that point twice within the comments here somehow - this needs a drop-off curve or something, where, if a person who has >100.000 followers, but follows less than say 500, it means you're seriously VIPed right there :)
cyborg 15y ago
Great work, one problem: How influential someone is should be a function of #followers and #following - not just #followers. A high #followers/#following is what really indicates influence. Most of my top 10 were people (or biz accts) that had followed 60k people and hence have a lot of followers. Edit: Just noticed the VIP factor, which does exactly what I'm suggesting.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  yeah, exactly, that's the vip factor. although, even that number is not perfect, since a lot of high-follower accounts also follow a high number of people (in the hundred thousands), which does not make you VIP for being followed. so i'll have to figure out a curve on this one I guess.
tibbon 15y ago
That's pretty cool. How did you get around the issue that you have to issue that you have to do an API call for every follower to get their details (quickly outstripping the number of API requests the average person has)? Or at least, that's how you had to do it prior. Unfortunately, the information it gave me wasn't helpful: @BarackObama, @TwitPic, @Schwarzenegger, @WholeFoods, @Starbucks, @zappos, @threadless, @imogenheap, @charitywater, @ijustine Basically, I have a handful of big companies and politicians following me. The only one I've met a handful of times personally and had any interaction with is iJustine.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  You know iJustine? Congrats :) Regarding your point: Yes, as discussed in other parts of the comment section, I believe that tonight I'll take some time and implement a feature that allows you to hide people who have a ton of followers, and also, follow a huge amount of people ... which basically, doesn't mean anything to you then. so this should address the issue.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  and regarding the api: twitter has updated it so that I can query a huge list of IDs (with paging), then in a second query, submit up to 100 ids and get data back (iterating in packs of 100) ... it's probably not solving the issue fully, for Barack that is, but for most of us, it should.
mittermayr 15y ago
QUICK UPDATE: I have added your feedback to the site now! You can filter out the auto-follows and get your REAL, HONEST followers only now as well in a separate chart.

46 points by mittermayr 15y ago

jarin 15y ago

It looks like I managed to follow several huge celebrities back when they auto-followed you back :)

mittermayr 15y ago
:) yeah exactly! i was wondering if I should add an option, to not include (or maybe hide) accounts who obviously show high auto-follow-back rates, i.e. a low score follower/following

citricsquid 15y ago

Apparently a few large followed accounts follow me that I wasn't aware of, neat application... An idea I've wanted to do for a long time (but isn't technically possible) is to analyse the reach a user has. For example, when I tweet normally it is sent out to my ~520 followers, but what about when my tweet is retweeted? What about how many are active and the chances that they saw the tweet? It would be really interesting to see stuff like that. Side note, can you explain "VIP Factor?" I assume it's where you position in their follows (longer that they've followed the higher the score)?

mittermayr 15y ago
VIP factor currently is just: how many followers does a user have : how many does he follow? but this needs tweaking, since, if a person follows 10000 and has 10000000 followers, you are still a nobody, being followed by them. i guess i need to figure out a curve for that. anyways, thanks for the kind words.
cnxsoft 15y ago
That's what Klout is doing, analyzing the social reach of a user.

mittermayr 15y ago

thanks guys for checking this out. i wanted to post this before going to lunch (european time), and now this. there's hundreds of people on the site right now, and i can't go to lunch, uugghg, internet!! :) p.s. feedback is heavily welcome, i am happy to add a few things and maybe post the whole thing on github or something if anyone needs a quickndirty starter for twitter integration apps.

mittermayr 15y ago

would you say people would pay a dollar to see their top 50 followers? just curious...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

mittermayr 15y ago

also, if anyone is curious, all UI is done by bootstrap (https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap), added some simple php for the twitter crunching (using twitteroauth) and that's it.

tibbon 15y ago
Can you put it on Github? There's one thing I'd like to see how you're doing it logic-wise.
- mittermayr 15y ago
  ask, what part?

mittermayr 15y ago

i've decided to live-stream my analytics account, so you can see yourself making an impact :) http://livestream.com/mittermayr http://livestream.com/mittermayr

AshleysBrain 15y ago

Great work! Always wanted something like this and wondered why Twitter didn't have an option to show you this kind of info. Nice idea.

mittermayr 15y ago
right?? i couldn't find this anywhere, despite a trillion twitter service out there. i built it for myself, to see some more details, but bootstrap is a great thing to make a little script look awesome in an instant, so i figured why not post it.

helen842000 15y ago

Hey, I'm part way through building a very similar project with a few extra paid for features! Congrats on getting your site launched in such a short time! It's an interesting aspect to analyse your own network.

mittermayr 15y ago
go for it, just make sure you let those pay who do this professionally, and those who are curious should have access to full functionality albeit a limited set of result rows maybe or something like it. i really hated all these twitter services who make me sign up do a bunch of things and then tell me to pay or not see any results. let us know when you go live :)
- helen842000 15y ago
  Will do! Mine is more from the angle of looking at most followed people in your secondary network (friends of friends) finding 'popular' and relevant new people to follow as I think the Twitter site is terrible at helping you to find & follow quickly. I agree that for the most part these services should be free and simple and the paid features are to help the pros.

PeterWhittaker 15y ago

Cool, but one quibble: You need to make it obvious right up front that cookies must be enabled on your domain for this to work (not sure why this is needed, but...). I block all cookies by default and got all the way to the end of the process only to discover nothing. Nothing! (Kudos for handling failure gracefully, at least the app didn't blow up, everything looked fine - but anti-kudos for not detecting that the process wasn't working.) When I enabled cookies on fruji, ta-da, it worked fine. Turns out I'm not very important, sigh. :->

mittermayr 15y ago
will do so in a second ... thanks!
herval 15y ago
I imagine MOST webapps out there are basically broken for you, no?

pors 15y ago

Very nice! You could improve it by filtering out accounts that follow a large number of others. Many of the real VIPs have many followers, but don't follow that many themselves.

mittermayr 15y ago
exactly, responded to that point twice within the comments here somehow - this needs a drop-off curve or something, where, if a person who has >100.000 followers, but follows less than say 500, it means you're seriously VIPed right there :)

cyborg 15y ago

Great work, one problem: How influential someone is should be a function of #followers and #following - not just #followers. A high #followers/#following is what really indicates influence. Most of my top 10 were people (or biz accts) that had followed 60k people and hence have a lot of followers. Edit: Just noticed the VIP factor, which does exactly what I'm suggesting.

mittermayr 15y ago
yeah, exactly, that's the vip factor. although, even that number is not perfect, since a lot of high-follower accounts also follow a high number of people (in the hundred thousands), which does not make you VIP for being followed. so i'll have to figure out a curve on this one I guess.

tibbon 15y ago

That's pretty cool. How did you get around the issue that you have to issue that you have to do an API call for every follower to get their details (quickly outstripping the number of API requests the average person has)? Or at least, that's how you had to do it prior. Unfortunately, the information it gave me wasn't helpful: @BarackObama, @TwitPic, @Schwarzenegger, @WholeFoods, @Starbucks, @zappos, @threadless, @imogenheap, @charitywater, @ijustine Basically, I have a handful of big companies and politicians following me. The only one I've met a handful of times personally and had any interaction with is iJustine.

mittermayr 15y ago
You know iJustine? Congrats :) Regarding your point: Yes, as discussed in other parts of the comment section, I believe that tonight I'll take some time and implement a feature that allows you to hide people who have a ton of followers, and also, follow a huge amount of people ... which basically, doesn't mean anything to you then. so this should address the issue.
mittermayr 15y ago
and regarding the api: twitter has updated it so that I can query a huge list of IDs (with paging), then in a second query, submit up to 100 ids and get data back (iterating in packs of 100) ... it's probably not solving the issue fully, for Barack that is, but for most of us, it should.

mittermayr 15y ago

QUICK UPDATE: I have added your feedback to the site now! You can filter out the auto-follows and get your REAL, HONEST followers only now as well in a separate chart.