GitHubGitHub followers in the MacBook notch
Followers are the count on the account itself, not on any repository, so this is the one GitHub widget that needs no repository.
Account followers, not repository watchers
GitHub has three numbers people confuse. Stars bookmark a repository. Watchers subscribe to a repository's notifications. Followers subscribe to an account's public activity, and that is what this number is.
For an organisation, followers are people tracking everything the organisation publishes. For a personal account they are closer to a social graph: people who want your new repositories in their feed.
Why there is no sparkline
GitHub returns the current total on the user object as followers. There is
no endpoint for the count on a past date and no event stream to reconstruct
one from, so the widget shows the figure as it stands. That is also why this
is the only GitHub metric with no repository to pick: it belongs to the
account the connection authorised, not to any project under it.
What GitHub followers means, exactly
People following the GitHub account this connection signed in as.
A whole number.
How the widget behaves
- Buckets
- hourly, daily, weekly and monthly
- Shape
- A figure, with no sparkline
- Against last period
- No
- Fetched from
- api.github.com
Questions
- How is GitHub followers calculated?
- People following the GitHub account this connection signed in as. Notch Metrics reports that number, unchanged, in the MacBook notch.
- Can I see GitHub followers over time?
- GitHub followers is a snapshot of right now, so the widget shows the figure without a sparkline. The windows it accepts are 24 hours, 7, 30 and 90 days, and 12 months.
- What unit is GitHub followers in?
- A whole number.
- What does it cost to put GitHub followers in the notch?
- $9 a month, or $49 a year, with every connector included and no per-integration charge. The seven-day trial needs no card, so you can see your own followers before deciding.