Every World Cup there's a moment. Some player nobody outside their domestic league had heard of scores an absolute screamer in a knockout match, and by the time they've finished celebrating, their follower count is climbing like a rocket.
I always found that fascinating, but I could never see it happening. By the time the "X gained 3M followers!" tweets show up, the surge is already over. So this tournament I built a little tracker that snapshots player follower counts on a schedule and shows me the growth curve in near real-time.
Here's how it works.
The problem with doing this "properly"
My first instinct was the official APIs. That died fast.
