0

The below Javascript function I used to have the twitter share count for a URL.

Unfortunately, twitter stopped providing the count of shares now. Is there any better alternative for that ?

  // Twitter Shares Count
$.getJSON( 'http://cdn.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=' + $URL + '&callback=?', function( twitdata ) {
    $('#twitter-count').text( ReplaceNumberWithCommas(twitdata.count) + ' Tweets ')
});

You can see how it is failing now

http://jsfiddle.net/sureshatta/5TxBd/125/

Previously the above call giving me the exact count of tweets with that url but twitter stopped that.

Can someone suggest any quick alternative for the above call ?

Suresh Atta
  • 120,458
  • 37
  • 198
  • 307
  • Would [this](https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/search) be what you're looking for? – mattrick Nov 24 '15 at 06:26
  • @mattrick That api doesn't have information to get count. I can see only getting the tweets information. – Suresh Atta Nov 24 '15 at 06:28
  • twitter URL in fiddle throws 404 – Tushar Nov 24 '15 at 06:30
  • 1
    @Tushar Yes exactly. Previously it used to work twitter stopped it now. Previously used to work. http://stackoverflow.com/a/9031032/1927832 – Suresh Atta Nov 24 '15 at 06:32
  • @sᴜʀᴇsʜᴀᴛᴛᴀ it appears as referenced [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21579999/count-number-of-results-for-a-particular-word-on-twitter-api-v1-1) and [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6052645/get-total-count-of-tweets-from-a-api-search-result) that there's no definitive way to get a count using the v2 API. I don't see why Twitter would remove it though. – mattrick Nov 24 '15 at 06:33
  • @mattrick So there is no way to get that :( – Suresh Atta Nov 24 '15 at 06:37

1 Answers1

1

On the last November 20, Twitter just shut down the JSON endpoint referenced in the question, which provided the share count.

Right now, Open Share Count is a free alternative to get the Twitter Share Count.

There's some caveats, though:

  1. It works but it's a very new service, so we don't know yet from experience how reliable and scalable it is.
  2. It's based on the REST API Search endpoints which, as Twitter mentioned on this page:

The Search API is not meant to be an exhaustive source of Tweets. Not all Tweets will be indexed or made available via the search interface.

Open Share Count mentions that will deal with this, though, so you can always have an accurate share count.

  1. You will need to grant Open Share Count access to your Twitter account, so they can obtain your credentials – this is far from optimal, but inevitable in this particular case.
  2. No information on the Open Share Count site about future plans – like if this will be free forever or a paid service at some point – nor any explanation about the security of your Twitter credentials. There's just a brief mention about a premium service, but that's it.

That said, right now this is probably the easiest and fastest way to make the Twitter share count work again with any degree of accuracy.

Marcio Duarte
  • 703
  • 7
  • 15