Here is a quick way to get follower stats for any Twitter user without using the Twitter API. I found this via their Follow button so please don’t consider this a permanent solution.
https://cdn.syndication.twimg.com/widgets/followbutton/info.json?screen_names=konstruktors
which returns something like this:
[
{
"following":false,
"id":"17989067",
"screen_name":"konstruktors",
"name":"Kaspars",
"protected":false,
"followers_count":664,
"formatted_followers_count":"664 followers",
"age_gated":false
}
]
Lol, that’s awesome. I actually needed to set this up a few days ago. It was highly annoying having to dick around with authentication just to get something so basic.
This is more than great :) thanks a lot for this hint
FANTASTIC!!! Just Fantastic. You got my code down to just one single line, instead of 12 or 14. Super hack this is :)
Sheer genius.
Appreciated.-
This still works, and is now by far the quickest option for aggregating basic account info due to the new (July 2018) stringent approval process required for creating a twitter dev account.
Thanks for the confirmation!
2021 and this thing still works. Awesome!
Looks like it no longer works.
Reason – They no longer provide the ability to display follower count for Follow buttons.
Indeed, the follower count has been removed from the button output.