Fathomer is a highly customizable tool that detects if a visitor to your site is a Twitter user and shows a badge, or ad, with your message and a link to your Twitter account.

The idea behind Fathomer is to directly target users who are already Twitter members. The thinking behind this is that existing users are much, much more likely to follow you than people who have never encountered Twitter before.

It works by detecting if a user has visited the account settings page on Twitter, which is a URL you can only access once you have been logged in to the service. The user does not have to enter any personal account information, nor do you.

Its easy to install on your site, simply by adding a small piece of javascript somewhere on your page.

It is possible to customize Fathomer in the following ways:

1. Custom message - A default is used if none is set.
2. Specify your account name. This is the only required piece of information and is used for display purposes only.
3. Custom CSS and badge html - A complete default badge comes installed. Its possible to customize the CSS and even make your own html for the badge.
4. Change detection url - You can change the Twitter url that is being checked if you need to.
5. Target badge placement - By default, the badge loads in the top-right corner of the browser. However this can be changed to whatever load in whatever html element you want.

REQUIREMENTS AND NOTICES:

Fathomer is written in jQuery. If your site already uses the jQuery library, it works just fine. However, if Fathomer doesn't find jQuery, it will dynamically load it into the browser.

You have to configure your Twitter username in the script. There's no way to guess, so if you don't want to publish your Twitter account then why are you using Fathomer?

HOW TO USE

Paste this code into your page. Customize the different parameters by uncommenting them and modifying them.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://fathomer.googlecode.com/files/fathomer0.6-min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
	// Required. Your account name.
	fathomer.account = 'yourAccountName';

	// Optional. The message that is displayed.
	//fathomer.message = 'Sample override message.';

	// Optional. Can specify a specific element to attach to. ID, class, or css selector
	//fathomer.target = '';

	// Optional. Turn off default css if you have your own styles.
	//fathomer.loadcss = false;

	// Optional. Can be changed to a different Twitter url to check the visited history state.
	//fathomer.urlcheck = '';

	// Optional. If a custom html structure is needed, it can be loaded using standard jquery methods in altbadge. Properties are accessed/set via fathomer.var, e.g. fathomer.message.
	//fathomer.altbadge = function(){};

	fathomer.init();

</script>

HOW IT BEHAVES

Here's the matrix of rules that happen that determine if Fathomer shows or not. When a user closes the badge, a cookie is set so as not to show it again.

• Not visited fathomer.urlcheck + No cookie = NO SHOW
• Not visited fathomer.urlcheck + Cookie = NO SHOW
• Visited fathomer.urlcheck + No cookie = SHOW!! (basically this means its very likely the user is a Twitter member)
• Visited fathomer.urlcheck + Cookie = NO SHOW!! (the user has seen the badge and closed it)