Use the Social Follow API to link your audience to your many profiles

Reliable, customizable, and fast to help you grow your brand.

Social Follow API

Grow Your Followers

Grow your social influence and brand following faster by linking to and encouraging your visitors to follow and connect with your brand across all of your social media channels such as Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. The Social Follow API is free to use with premium upgrades available.

The Shareaholic JavaScript SDK incorporates this API and has many other very useful bells and whistles, including the ability to customize the buttons to match the look and feel of your site or application. It typically takes less than 10 minutes and 2 lines of code to install. We highly recommend using the SDK to save time. It is the preferred implementation for Social Follow Buttons.

API Designed for Ease

We have optimized for ease of implementation. All API methods are accessible via simple HTTP calls. Most implementations of this API take less than 15 minutes to setup. Simply call the provided URLs with their respective parameters, and you're done.

Getting Started: Authentication

All API endpoints require API authentication credentials to be supplied as query arguments (apikey). To get started, you'll need a free Shareaholic account and Site ID. Signup for an account and then add your site to get your Site ID. The Site ID is your API Key for the Social Follow API.

Example:

...&apikey=8943b7fd64cd8b1770ff5affa9a9437b&...

Note: the apikey used in this document is intended for use as an example only. It is subject to change.

Parameters

Endpoint: https://www.shareaholic.com/v2/follow/

Parameter Description Required Example
apikey API Key Required apikey=8943b7fd64cd8b1770ff5affa9a9437b
service_nickname Destination Required service_nickname=x
username Username for Destination username=beyonce
app_id Reference to Follow Button ID saved in your Shareaholic Admin Console app_id=123
app_id_name Reference to Follow Button Name saved in your Shareaholic Admin Console app_id_name=contact_page_placement
One of either username, app_id or app_id_name is required.

Working Example:

https://www.shareaholic.com/v2/follow/?service_nickname=x&username=beyonce&apikey=8943b7fd64cd8b1770ff5affa9a9437b

Give it a try: 🥂  Follow Beyonce on X

Cloud Settings (app_id & app_id_name)

If you prefer not to include the service username in the request, you may store them in your Shareaholic Admin Console and specify a corresponding app_id or app_id_name in your request. The API will automatically lookup the saved username from the cloud settings linked to the API Key for the specified app_id or app_id_name.

You can create App ID's in the Follow Buttons section of the Shareaholic Admin Console under Apps and can lookup the app_id value by clicking "code". App ID value (ex. 12345) is displayed as data-app-id=12345. app_id_name is the name of an In-Page Follow Button instance, with spaces replaced with underscores. For instance: follow_buttons_after_post. Keep in mind that if you change your Follow Buttons instance name, this value will change too!

JSON Response for JavaScript and AJAX

To get a JSON response, simply add the .js extension to the request path. For example:

https://www.shareaholic.com/v2/follow.js?service_nickname=x&username=beyonce&apikey=8943b7fd64cd8b1770ff5affa9a9437b

Example success response:

{
 "data":{
    "id":"6552803",
    "type":"follow-request",
    "attributes":{
       "link":"https://x.com/intent/follow?screen_name=beyonce"
    }
 },
 "meta":{
    "copyright":"Copyright Shareaholic Inc.",
    "version":"3"
 }
}

Error codes

Code Description
100 apikey not provided
101 apikey provided is invalid
110 service_nickname not provided
111 service_nickname provided is invalid
120 username or app_id or app_id_name is missing or invalid value provided

Example error response:

{
 "errors":[
    {
       "code":"120",
       "source":{
          "pointer":"/data/attributes/username"
       },
       "detail":"Missing or invalid username, app_id or app_id_name. See https://www.shareaholic.com/api/follow/ for usage examples."
    }
 ]
}

Destination Services

Service Service Nickname Icon
500px five_hundred_px
about.me about_me
Behance behance
Better Business Bureau bbb
Bloglovin bloglovin
Bluesky bluesky
Discord discord
Disqus disqus
Dribbble dribbble
eBay ebay
Email This email_this
Etsy etsy
Facebook facebook
Feedly feedly
Flickr flickr
Foursquare foursquare
Gab gab
GETTR gettr
Github github
Google Classroom google_classroom
Houzz houzz
Instagram instagram
iTunes itunes_podcast
Kakao kakao
LinkedIn linkedin
LinkedIn Company linkedin_company
LiveJournal livejournal
Medium medium
Meetup meetup
MeWe mewe
Micro.blog micro_blog
Mix mix
Odnoklassniki odnoklassniki
Parler parler
Patreon patreon
Pinterest pinterest
Raindrop.io raindrop_io
Rakuten (楽天ブログ) rakuten_blog
Reddit reddit
RSS rss
Skype skype
Slack slack
SlideShare slideshare
Snapchat snapchat
SoundCloud soundcloud
Spotify spotify
Stack Overflow stackoverflow
Steam steam
Stocktwits stocktwits
Strava strava
Telegram telegram
Threads threads
TikTok tiktok
Trello trello
Tripadvisor tripadvisor
Truth Social truthsocial
Tumblr tumblr
Twitch twitch
Vimeo vimeo
VK vk
WeChat wechat
WhatsApp whatsapp
X (Twitter) twitter
Yelp yelp
YouTube youtube
Zillow zillow_digs

Feedback

If you believe you have found a bug, or you’d like to request additional functionality, or you release something using this API, we’d love to hear from you.

Build with Shareaholic

Developer Tools and APIs that are reliable, stable, and fast. Built and run on the same scaled cloud infrastructure that runs Shareaholic products and powers functionality across over 300,000+ sites. Over 10 rock solid years in production.

As seen in