When getting a list of followers, is there any way to get ONLY the updated information (ie using some sort of cursor or indicator) instead of the entire list?

[angela_guu]

I have an application that generates some analytics based on Twitter followers. I’m trying to get all the followers of a user. The problem is, this often results in making large number of API calls. I have a few questions:

1. Is there a way of using a time-based cursor for getting only followers that were created after a certain point in time? Or are there any other ways to achieve the question in the title?
2. How is the list of followers returned by the API ordered? (by id, time, etc?)
3. Is there any “smarter” way of syncing the followers of a user? Right now I’m storing all the ids in a database, and after I fetch the ids of the followers, I compare the ids I’ve fetched with those stored in my database to see if there are any differences.