Birdbrain: Track Your Twitter Network in Style

Are you addicted to Twitter? Do you find yourself linking your self-esteem to the ups and downs of your follower count despite knowing that it’s completely pointless vanity to do so? Join the club.

Today we’re going to take a look at Birdbrain Twitter Statistics, an app for Twitterholics like you and me who require constant and thorough updates regarding our favorite productivity-eating network.

Getting Started

When you open up Birdbrain for the first time, you don’t have to sign up for any new services, you simply log into your existing Twittter account.

Signing Into Twitter

Birdbrain has full multi-account support as well. Just hit the little plus button in the top right of the screen to add more accounts.

Once you sign on, Birdbrain will immediately begin tracking your statistics from that point forward. Unfortunately, it can’t grab past data so you’ll have to start at square one with any of the long-term stats.

Basic Statistics

When you tap on an account you’ll be taken to the main screen for your profile. Here you can see how many people you are following versus how many people are following you along with your number of updates, mentions, retweets and blocked users.

Your Stats

By swiping left or right on this screen you can see the previous numbers for these statistics. You can go back 24 hours, a week, a month, all the way to two years!

As you can see in the image above on the right, the changes are highlighted so you can easily see your progress (or lack thereof).

Your Network

Using the buttons along the bottom of the app you can navigate to screens that show you a list of your followers, a list of those you’re following and all your mentions.

The blue bars show the date and time of the update along with your follower count at the time. A little plus icon next to a user indicates that they recently began following you, a minus icon means that they stopped following you (so long @cheetahwood).

Followers (left) and Mentions (right)

When you tap on a username in any of the lists above you will be taken to that user’s page. Here you can see the same statistics as on your own page along with your following and followback status, the person’s most recent tweet, and various other information from their account.

Individual User Stats

By tapping on the gear in the upper right corner of a user page you can bring up the window above on the right which allows you to perform a number of different tasks like blocking or following. There’s even integration with Twitpic and Favstar.fm.

More Options

Under the “More” tab you are given even more ways to view your network including helpful categories like nonreciprocal followers and retweets.

More Options

I’m definitely not the kind of Twitter user that will follow you just because you followed me, but it’s still really nice to be able to quickly see the people that are following you that you aren’t already following back. It’s a great way to find people that you’re likely to have an interest in.

What’s Missing?

As far as I can tell, almost nothing. Birdbrain is an excellent app with a sharp interface and plenty of features. It doesn’t function as a full-fledged Twitter client and doesn’t claim to. As long as you know that before you purchase it there’s nothing to be disappointed about. What it does is give you a quick and easy way to keep an eye on your network and the changes therein over time.

As a designer and incurable visual thinker, I would love to see some fancy charts worked in for the statistics. I really like the service TwitterCounter and see a lot of potential for some similar functionality here. For now the simple numbers are fine, but as Davy Kestens so cleverly pointed out, designers love charts!

Conclusion

Birdbrain is a simple and great way to track all things Twitter. From follower counts six months ago to yesterday’s retweets, this app will give even the most data hungry users something to constantly check in on.

Leave a comment below and tell us about any cool tools you’ve discovered to track your Twitter network and how they compare to Birdbrain.