Combining RSS and Twitter Subscriber Counts

Jul 16, 2009 by Matt | Posted in Design 9 Comments

If you’ve been to Mac AppStorm recently, you may have noticed that their new subscriber count box doesn’t just list the FeedBurner circulation. It seems to be a sum of the FeedBurner subscribers and the AppStorm Twitter account’s followers.

AppStorm Subscriber Counter

An interesting idea, isn’t it? I had a similar thought recently. I figured, with all of the popularity of Twitter, and it’s RSS reader-like qualities, why shouldn’t you combine the two? Otherwise the counter only represents a fraction of the total day-to-day reader base. It seems that Envato is taking the lead though; they’re the first I’ve seen to do this so far. Perhaps Tuts+ blogs will be next to receive this feature?

FreelanceSwitch, similarly, shows counters for Twitter, RSS, podcast subscribers and the registered users in the footer. It doesn’t go to quite the same extent of the AppStorm counter, but it shows all the right data.

Subscriber Counter on FreelanceSwitch

Which approach do you think is better? AppStorm’s or FreelanceSwitch’s?

  • http://designblurb.com Sumesh

    I think FSw's idea is better, and I'd also like a quick tutorial on how to achieve both of these methods of subscriber display. :)

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

      I was thinking of doing just that. I just haven't had the time to work on it yet. Watching Harry Potter got in the way… :)

  • http://www.earningstep.com earningtsep

    i vote to fsw's. because is better

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/michaelmartin Michael Martin

    I prefer FreelanceSwitch's as well. Seems a little deceiving to put them together (Twitter follower count can be quite artificial. Just follow a few thousand accounts with with auto followbacks. Doesnt make for much of a connection though. :( )

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

      What's your opinion on auto follow-backs? I don't care for them personally. It fudges follower counts, and they're probably not really paying attention to your tweets…

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/deansaliba deansaliba

    I was unaware people could subscribe to your blog feed via Twitter.

    I'd be interested in reading a post about in the future.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/redwall_hp redwall_hp

      Basically you use something like Twitterfeed.com or my Tweetable plugin to automatically tweet your posts (Title + a short URL). If people follow you, they get the links, and might or might not read them, just like with RSS.

  • http://www.andrewkeir.com Andrew Keir

    I like the app storm one myself. Any idea what their using to combine them all ? I'm using wordpress myself but haven't been able to find a plug-in to combine them all.