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 in real time. By the time the "X gained 3 million 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 as it happens. Here's how it works.
Why the official APIs were a dead end
My first instinct was to do this "properly" with official APIs. That died fast:
