Birdbrain for iPhone [iTunes Link (opens in new tab)] is an app that aggregates your Twitter statistics such as followers, following, blocked, and several other variables into one app. It also shows you differences in how many followers you've gained or lost. You can also see the specific people that have started following you or stopped following you. Clicking on a user will also allow you to view certain statistics about that user.
If you're someone who likes to keep track of your statistics on Twitter, Birdbrain could prove to be very useful to you. I could see this app being helpful for companies who want to use Twitter as a marketing tool and track trends. On the same token, I could also see it causing problems where people now have a way of knowing exactly what users have stopped following them (let the Twitter fights commence).
When you open the app for the first time, it'll grab initial info from Twitter. So at first, you can't see past information such as the last 7 days or last 24 hours. When you open the app in the future, it will begin to congregate past statistics and show you the differences.
The overall layout of the app is pretty slick. It's incredibly easy to figure out and very user friendly. One thing I wasn't sure of was how the app loaded your statistics. I wasn't sure what happens if you don't open the app for a week or so? Are the 24 hour statistics still accurate or what is it loading it from? That's what had me a little confused. It definitely doesn't load your statistics in the background.
I could also see some users wanting push notifications. Getting push notifications for when users follow or unfollow you would be a nice added feature but that would require Birdbrain to poll the Twitter servers quite often in order to aggregate and push the information. I could see that being a little overkill. Personally, I wouldn't really care to see notifications of when someone stopped following me, but I wouldn't mind having notifications for when someone starts following me. Then I'd disable the emails Twitter sends me. There's also a mentions tab within the app, which will congregate all your mentions and keep a running total of how many times you've been mentioned on Twitter.
Overall, it's a decent app that does what it says it will. If you've been looking for a way to monitor your Twitter statistics more closely, this app could be what you've been looking for.
Pros
- Nice interface
- Shows a nice amount of statistics
- Seems to be really accurate
Cons
- Push notifications would be a nice addition
- Takes a few days to start aggregating information
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iMore senior editor from 2011 to 2015.
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I really don't think it makes any sense to add "Takes a few days to start aggregating information" as a con... I mean, that's how aggregating information across the board works, you need days of data to start utilizing it's core functions....
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Thanks for the review! I'm about to download this app from the App Store. So far, I've been using www.friendorfollow.com on the web to deal with non-reciprocal followers, the iphone app Boxcar for push notifications, and Twitter app for e-mail notifications. One day, there's going to be just 1 Facebook app and just 1 Twitter app that do everything people have been asking for since day 1.
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Speaking of which, I wish there were an app (iphone or web-based) for Facebook to let you know who defriended you. IIRC, there was an app but got shut down due to Facebook...
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