---
title: Thomas Slabbers
description: Co-founder of Socialdatabase; X/Twitter data analytics and advertising platform
category: People
---

# Thomas Slabbers

![Thomas Slabbers](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1837539695093026817/placeholder.jpg)

**Thomas Slabbers** is a Dutch entrepreneur based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is the **Co-founder of [Socialdatabase](https://socialdatabase.com)**, a company specialising in X (Twitter) audience data analysis and targeted advertising, and a formal **X Partner**. He is active on X as [@Thomasslabbers](https://x.com/Thomasslabbers) with 10,900+ followers.[^x]

## Career

Slabbers wrote a university research thesis titled *"You are who you follow: A deeper analysis of how people act on Twitter,"* which came to the attention of retired data scientist and rally driver Roland Rijpma. The paper's insights on Twitter data prompted Rijpma's return to professional work, and in **July 2013**, Slabbers, Rijpma, and data engineer Peter Versteegen co-founded **Socialdatabase** in Amsterdam.[^about]

Socialdatabase analyses publicly available X/Twitter data, processes and recategorises accounts behaviorally, and provides fact-backed audience targeting for advertisers across X, Meta, LinkedIn, and Reddit. By 2015, the company's data consumption was significant enough that Twitter invited them to San Francisco HQ for a meeting — where Twitter was impressed by the scale and accuracy of Socialdatabase's database restructuring.[^about]

The company grew to process **3 billion social accounts** and became an official **X Partner**, a status that gives it direct API access and commercial alignment with the platform. Prior to founding Socialdatabase, Slabbers worked at Twitter as an employee in advertising/sales for several years.[^linkedin]

He is notably active on X, with posts frequently reaching millions of views on topics related to X platform changes, Dutch media, and AI.

## Connection to Jan

Thomas Slabbers reached out to Jan directly on X following Jan's high-visibility Twitter activity in early 2025. Jan noted him as one of the notable inbound contacts from that period alongside Dmitry Alexenko, Enes Akar, and others. Discussions explored potential collaboration around X data and social context tooling — themes directly relevant to Jan's vision for uithub incorporating X data. Jan ultimately declined a full-time role.[^diary][^freeman]

## See Also

- [[Jan Wilmake]]
- [[uithub]]

[^x]: X profile: https://x.com/Thomasslabbers
[^about]: Socialdatabase company history: socialdatabase.com/about
[^linkedin]: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/slabbersthomas
[^diary]: Personal diary February–March 2025: `2025/2025-02-diary.md`, `2025-03-diary.md`
[^freeman]: Contact network notes: `2025/freeman.md`