I'm searching for a tool that will track the gross number of Twitter followers gained.
Most tools I find will track the net amount, for example, if I were to gain 9 followers in a day, but lose 15, it would only show me a loss of 6 followers.
I'm trying to see the data before the losses are factored in, so in the above example, I'd just want to see the 9 followers gained.
Best Answer
Unless twitter makes all the data available to the 3rd party, they will never know about changes that take place between the samples.
For example: if the 3rd party gets the list of users on the first of the month, and compares it to the list on the first of the previous month they can determine the following:
The 3rd party has no idea if somebody followed you on the 5th, and then dropped you on the 12th.
The more often they sample, the closer they can get to the gross numbers you want. Daily samples are good, but every few minutes would be better.