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: 
> 
> Twitter API 1.0 is deprecated and is no longer active. With the REST 1.1 API, you need oAuth authentication to retrieve data from Twitter.
> 
> 
> 

Use this instead:

```
<?php
    require_once('TwitterAPIExchange.php'); //get it from https://github.com/J7mbo/twitter-api-php

    /** Set access tokens here - see: https://dev.twitter.com/apps/ **/
    $settings = array(
        'oauth_access_token' => "YOUR_OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN",
        'oauth_access_token_secret' => "YOUR_OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET",
        'consumer_key' => "YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY",
        'consumer_secret' => "YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET"
    );

    $ta_url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json';
    $getfield = '?screen_name=REPLACE_ME';
    $requestMethod = 'GET';
    $twitter = new TwitterAPIExchange($settings);
    $follow_count=$twitter->setGetfield($getfield)
    ->buildOauth($ta_url, $requestMethod)
    ->performRequest();
    $data = json_decode($follow_count, true);
    $followers_count=$data[0]['user']['followers_count'];
    echo $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"`