Question: Is the only way to get the follower count number in plain text is using cURL? or does the twitter API provides any such option?

Answer: 
<https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.json?screen_name=tvdw> (my profile, just replace the screen name)

Also available as XML: <https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.xml?screen_name=tvdw>

Obtaining it in PHP:

```
$data = json_decode(file_get_contents('https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.json?screen_name=tvdw'), true);
echo $data[0]['followers_count'];

```
```
<a href="https://twitter.com/twitterapi" class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false" data-lang="en">Follow @twitterapi</a>

<script>
!function(d,s,id){
    var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
    if(!d.getElementById(id)){
        js=d.createElement(s);
        js.id=id;
        js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";
        fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);
    }
}
(document,"script","twitter-wjs");    
</script>

```

`data-show-count = "true"`