CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythontwitter
Patrick
Patrick

Reputation: 727

Python Twitter Statistics

I need to get the number of people who have followed a certain account by month, also the number of people who have unfollowed the same account by month, the total number of tweets by month, and the total number of times something the account tweeted has been retweeted by month.

I am using python to do this, and have installed python-twitter, but as the documentation is rather sparse, I'm having to do a lot of guesswork. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction? I was able to get authenticated using OAuth, so thats not an issue, I just need some help with getting those numbers.

Thank you all.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1099

Answers (2)

Patrick
Patrick

Reputation: 727

My problem is I also need to get unfollow statistics, which twittercounter does not supply.

My solution was to access the twitter REST API directly, using the oauth2 library in python. I found this very simple compared to some of the other twitter libraries for python out there. This example was particularly helpful: http://parand.com/say/index.php/2010/06/13/using-python-oauth2-to-access-oauth-protected-resources/

Upvotes: 1

arcain
arcain

Reputation: 15270

These types of statistical breakdowns are not generally available via the Twitter API. Depending on your sample date range, you may have luck using Twittercounter.com's API (you can sign up for an API key here).

The API is rate limited to 100 calls per hour, unless you get whitelisted. You can get results for the previous 14 days. An example request is below:

http://api.twittercounter.com?twitter_id=813286&apikey=[api_key]

The results, in JSON, look like this:

{"version":"1.1","username":"BarackObama","url":"http:\/\/www.barackobama.com","avatar":"http:\/\/a1.twimg.com\/profile_images\/784227851\/BarackObama_twitter_photo_normal.jpg","followers_current":7420937,"date_updated":"2011-04-16","follow_days":"563","started_followers":"2264457","growth_since":5156480,"average_growth":"9166","tomorrow":"7430103","next_month":"7695917","followers_yesterday":7414507,"rank":"3","followers_2w_ago":7243541,"growth_since_2w":177396,"average_growth_2w":"12671","tomorrow_2w":"7433608","next_month_2w":"7801067","followersperdate":{"date2011-04-16":7420937,"date2011-04-15":7414507,"date2011-04-14":7400522,"date2011-04-13":7385729,"date2011-04-12":7370229,"date2011-04-11":7366548,"date2011-04-10":7349078,"date2011-04-09":7341737,"date2011-04-08":7325918,"date2011-04-07":7309609,"date2011-04-06":7306325,"date2011-04-05":7283591,"date2011-04-04":7269377,"date2011-04-03":7257596},"last_update":1302981230}

The retweet stats aren't available from Twittercounter, but you might be able to obtain those from Favstar (although they don't have a public API currently.)

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions