Now I know there are other people with far more followers than I have, but I do have a decent number of followers, even though most of them are fake strippers with webcams they need me to see or web 2.0 hipsters that want to help me blue sky some initiatives.  But I do kinda care about how many followers I have at times. I also get why other people become obsessed with follower numbers and statistics. We’ve linked our self-worth to the number of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and YouTube viewers we have. And if you’re narcissistic enough to care about all that, then boy do I have the app for you. It’s called Birdbrain, and it’ll keep you glued to your iPhone, and have you watching that pot so intently, that you’ll know right away when that water boils…I mean, when someone starts following you. Or unfollowing you, if you’re of the Guy Kawasaki variety.

When you first open up Birdbrain, you’re presented with a summary of your overall Twitter stats. You get followers, follows, posts…stuff like that. You can also swipe across to get those same stats with plus/minus values for the previous 24 hours and 7 days. Really helps you get a quick heads-up on how important you are as a human being. I myself have seen quite a trailing off of “real people” followers as of late. If it starts trending downwards, I just might have to kill myself…live…on Stickam. One caveat, Birdbrain creates these values based on time periods, but if you only open the app once a week, it’ll only be able to take one “snapshot” of your account, and thus, your 24 hours stats and 7 days stats will be the same.

The next two menus are detailed breakdowns of both your followers and then the people you’re following. It splits up your follower/following timelines by the snapshots you took, and denotes actions with pluses and minuses. You can tap on any of the users and jump to a profile page, which details their user stats, and also indicates what types of connections you two have; if either of you follow each other, if they protect their tweets, or if you are blocking them. Their most recent tweet is displayed at the bottom, and tapping it will bring up the mobile Twitter site in Birdbrain. You can’t do much other than see their timeline. Lastly, there’s a gear icon in the top right-hand corner of the user profile screen that will also let you view a timeline and set block/unblock status. Outside the blocked menu, this gear will change follow/unfollow status.

Milind’s word: What I was looking forward to is the ability to quickly follow or unfollow a bunch of people at a time. Also be able to tell at a glance who’s following me back, and who has got tired of my ramblings. Yes, I’m talking about something like the TwerpScan service. Unfortunately, with Birdbrain you have to drill down into a person’s info, tap the gear icon, and then unfollow or follow. Thankfully this is a 1.0 release, and one of the developers assured me of a lot of new features including—something he seemed very excited about—”stats on mentions!”. Back to Brandon.

Overall, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Birdbrain. I was afraid it would be kind of lame, but leave it to the MobileFotos people to do an interesting Twitter app. Just remember, you can’t actually tweet with this app. It exists solely to help you tracks stats and manage connections with other users. If you’re thinking this sounds interesting, you should probably just go ahead and buy it. It’s available in the App Store for $1.99. If you already think it’s stupid, you’re not gonna die if you don’t have Birdbrain.