I've reached 9000 followers! Wo0ot! But, how many are really following?

in followers •  7 years ago 

Wow, 9000 followers. That's a lot! That's way more than I've gotten on Facebook from posting my information. I appreciate the upvotes, feedback and interaction on my content. Thank you Steemians for your support :)

But wait a second. Hold the celebration... 9000 followers? Are these really followers of my content/work? Where are they all?

Since my return to Steem 3 months ago, I noticed I was getting 20 or more followers each day. It just kept going up, and up. It was going so fast that I used to have more posts that followers, but then my posts fell behind the amount of followers I had. At one point I had 500 more followers than posts. Then it was only ahead by 400. Then 300. Now it's a bit under 300 followers more than my posts, with posts likely going to overtake the followers again.

How did this happen? I would make a post, and boom, 1 follower, then another follower, then another, all within a few minutes. That has since slowed down considerably. Since I'm a pretty old user on the platform (August 2016), it's mostly new users who are starting to follow me.

But, are these new followers even going through my content? It doesn't seem like it. It seems they follow when new posts are made, and some might be duplicate or bot accounts. I don't get any new upvotes from these accounts (usually). I don't get any new comments from these accounts (usually). Over the past 2 months, I have attracted few new users to comment and upvote on my posts, despite having climbed from 6000 to 9000 followers in just over 3 months.

I've gained over 3000 followers in 3 months, yet only a few upvoters and commenters in support of my content. Who are these 3000 followers, and why do they follow people if they aren't interested in the content?

I wonder if my high reputation score has anything to do with it? They could care less about the content, but the high level reputation is attracting them to follow in hoes it gain some positive feedback on my part? I'm not sure. Or maybe it's the SP int he "bank" account (even tough I'm not an orca or whale status)?

In reality, I have more like 100 or less people who actually follow my content/work. I certainly don't have 100 people commenting. And let's face it, most upvotes are automated on the platform.

I just wanted to gripe/rant about the empty follower issue that I've noticed, as I'm pretty sure many others have noticed as well, and I took the opportunity to do so when I hit 9000 followers.

9000 followers is still 9000 followers nonetheless :) I appreciate all the support from everyone, be they manual votes or auto-votes. Thank you for all your interactions and support.

Do you not care if the follower count isn't really the amount of people who follow your content?
Would you prefer to have your follower count reflect lower numbers of people who actually follow you instead?


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I joined this platform just three months ago. Till now the number of my followers crossed 1000 marks. Most of them, I think, are bots. Only four to six persons usually upvote my posts. This huge number of followers disappears whenever I post something. Ha ha ha!
This is the reality of this platform. Not many users bother themselves to read others' posts and comments. I think interface of this platform is also a reason. I even cannot see every post of those whom I follow. Their posts buried under so many other posts. Also, voting power matters. One (a minnow) cannot upvote more than 10 to 12 posts or comments daily. I try to upvote every post which I like but I don't upvote comments on my posts because my voting power would not be enough to make that comment profitable as my voting value is only 0.01$. So I upvote those posts who make comment on my post. What else I can do?
BTW congratulation for this achievement. Increasing number of follower is not bad at all.

Yes, the interface is lacking in options that promote interactivity. Over a year ago I was asked to implement a feature to filter out resteems or other posts possibly by tags, but this was never implemented. If you go to busy.org and interior settings you can enable the vote power bar even if you have less than 500 SP. Thank you, it is nice to have so many followers, but I would prefer to have a real number, then a fake number that doesn't actually represent who is following me.

Congrats on the milestone!

Sometimes the whole follower thing gets a bit surreal. I was followed by a whole bot farm the other week... 86 new followers in four minutes! All of them shitposting "naked" (no descriptions) YouTube videos, and all of them with reps 25-27 and following 16,000 people.

Go figure. Sent all the account names to steemcleaners, not that much can likely be done.

Thank you :-) it's quite a sham how many new accounts are actually trash accounts. 1 million accounts is such a joke and nothing to be proud of when most of them are crap. Yes, not much to likely be done about it. :/

Haha....even me roo asking the same question...interesting thing i noticed..when you post trhough busy or steemit...the number of follwer takes a steep hike...but when i posted using esteem surfer there was no hike....i belive these resteem bot services did not get to @esteem surfer as of now

Perhaps you posted via esteem in the last few days? Cause it seems it already stopped.

It shouldn't make a difference what front end site you use, as everything that is posted goes on the steem block chain.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I hear you it’s certainly a strange situation. When I created my account I started with like 150 followers. Who the heck are those people besides just bots? It’s compounded in your situation but I find that people kind of treat this like Facebook in that their just follow as many people as possible without actually engaging with the ones they follow.
I’m sure you know that I appreciate the content you bring though! Keep up the great work.

Thank you for the appreciation, I appreciate that you appreciate the content I put out. :)

In reality, I have more like 100 or less people who actually follow my content/work. I certainly don't have 100 people commenting. And let's face it, most upvotes are automated on the platform.

Couldn't agree more! I am here for the interaction of to meet new people. Of course I do care about my Steem, and would like to increase it to minnow status but the one is the result of the other!
I do guess that some of these account are also created by (new) resteem services, to make it look more appealing to use!

Yep, probably lots of your followers are allured by the reputation. Because everybody thinks that a high reputation comes with a huge wallet. Which is true in most cases. Just like people think that a lower reputation means an almost empty wallet. O boy, the are so wrong! The lower rep just could have powered up some fresh fiat money for all they know!

I don't care about the number of followers and I do. I am posting my posts via busy and each Mvest which is following me, does help with the busy.pay upvote. (that why it did hurt a little bit, when you decided to unfollow me! But I did appreciate your response and do understand it) But I won't beg to be followed! It should be a free choice to follow me or not.
Just like it is my free choice to follow others or not!

Sometimes I do take a look at the figures about how many real followers I have, lots of tools available on the blockchain for this. This always gives a better indication!

Still congrats with the 9K followers milestone! Up to 10K I would say!
Cheers,
Peter

Yes there are many users at 25 rep who have hundreds of thousands or more in steem power. Thank you, yes almost at 10,000 :-)

I've been noticing this same issue. Was planning a post about these scam accounts. They clearly come from a bot that has control of 10-20 accounts at a time. Multiple of these bots are running around or maybe it's one and they break up who they follow to try and lessen the ability to track all of them. But there are clearly hundreds if not thousands of fake accounts that are running around propping up follower numbers. They never comment or upvote, just follow follow the yellow brick road.

Know the number means little to nothing, but congrats anyways!

That's interesting, but you think they come from a bot that has control of 10 to 20 accounts at a time. That's possible. Most of the accounts are duplicate or fake accounts I would gather, as there are not even 100,000 real people out of the 1 million registered accounts. Thank you :-)

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I think you are mostly right about the reputation, age, and your sp. Though I'm sure you have gained a few legit followers since you put in the work.

I seem to have to seek out legit followers myself sometimes. So much gets posted. It's hard for everything to get lost in the noise.

I myself have never signed up for the auto upvote thing. It's always been manually.. it's easy enough to spend my so manually curating for me lol..

Anyways congrats on 9k followers. Keep up the good work or else, you are appreciated!

Yes, a lot of good and hard work gets lost in the noise of so many posts. Thank you, I appreciate the appreciation :-)

First, congratulations on your achievement on steemit. Let me assume the chairman of steemboard today. Truly, 20% of the followers are just bot or phony accounts, 40% of the followers are inactive, 20% of the followers just follow you like any other with heigh reputation, 15% of the followers don't know what to comment in most of your post and the remaining 5% are in love with what you do and they participate in comment, resteem and upvotes. In democracy, number matters as the party with the majority wins. Finnally, check your the number of followers it has increased past 9000.😀

Thank you for the analysis. But I would say it's more like 1% that like what I do, as 100÷ 9000 gives a 1.1% answer.

More are coming......You are welcome

Congratulations first off. Thats a huge milestone.

Secondly, as we already discussed, bots are a problem. I read your post just now and thought: what if I had 9000 followers that were all bots? Zero humans. What would be the point?

Some of us are paying attention and are grateful for your insights and opinions and those are the things that matter really.

Ha ha, yes if they were all thoughts and no humans then that would be a reflection of how ludicrous a content platform is when it all run by automation for the most part. Thank you for the appreciation, I appreciate it :-)

I wonder if my high reputation score has anything to do with it?

Maybe not. I hardly pay attention to the number of supposed followers I have but just a few days ago my son wondered why he’d suddenly get 15 or 20 new followers just minutes after a new post. He’s a fine young man but newish here with a reputation of only 43 so far. Given how fast the number of followers go up, it’s gotta be mostly bots.

Okay, so it's a spammy follower thing that applies to everybody :/

Congratulations! Looking at your posts, any real people not following you are missing out and I'm sure you have quite a large real following. I don't think all new followers are bots. Some are real people who get bored of steemit and dont do anything.

When i started early on, every time i posted something, i used to see 10 new followers. And this is when my reputation score is quite low. It has finally stopped happening.

I'd rather have 10 followers who read and interact with me than the 300 odd ihave currently. And there are definitely a few who support my content.

Congratulations again. Well deserved.

Yes, that's true. Many are all the accounts from users who don't use steemit anymore. Thank you :-)

I noticed that every new post gets me 20 followers and since i have SP of 20, i am pretty sure they didn't do it because of SP. I check my organic growth by how many comments i actually get which is less than 5 from 450 followers. So I think its safe to say i have about 5 real followers.

Yeah the organic growth by comments does not reflect the vast increase in followers have gotten :/

I joined in January of this year and although I do automate some of my curation I also make a point to actually read as many posts as I can. I wonder how many people who are newer follow with the intent to stay on top of posts but simply don't keep up with it. Maybe it's related to a flood of new users from the last big crypto pump that lost their resolve after the bear market started? I could be totally wrong and it could just be bots or people that think they'll get upvotes from you but I just dont quite understand what the incentive to follow is if they aren't even reaping curation rewards.

Yes, it seems that when the price goes up, there is more interaction, and when the price goes down, there is less interaction. This platform has always had many users that focus mostly on the money and their behavior revolves around that primary focus. I think following might have the goal you state, possibly as many people do a follow for follow back and view the amount of followers they have as some achievement that makes them better or something, I don't know. :P

I just found out about you recently, so I'm one of those. I don't comment much on steemit anymore. I erase far more comments than I post because frankly I'm bored with myself and my stupid opinions, talking about crypto, steem, steemit, the whole steaming pile of shit, so I don't want to have to muster the energy to defend my opinions or think about it any more than my brain forces me to anyway.

As far as fake supporters goes, I have almost 900 followers and have never made a blog post. Think about that.

Well, in your case your followers can also come from comments you have made. I understand how sometimes the way things work can be viewed as a steaming pile of shit lol ;)

A large percentage of steemians joined the community just to make income. That built the mindset of follow for follow, upvote for upvote. Many follow because of what they feel they will get back. I have to say i practised this too.

But understanding that if we can take steemit the way we took face book and twitter, not expecting any reward,we would definitely create a good relationship among everyone. The only few among the high number of followers we have , are the only people actually following.

SyNick

You have that right, many are here just for the money and trying to be popular by being someone who makes money. Without the money they would be so many people that wouldn't be here at all.

Following is not stalking, from my point of view. You somehow got my attention with one of your posts than I probably checked your profile and thought, oh good this guy know some stuff I may interest in the future. It's something like bookmarking unless you ruin my feed you'll stay in my following list. If I have an opinion about your content I'll come and comment, if I agree I'll upvote. Even you have 9k real human, active followers there wouldn't be 9k comments on every single post.

Being rich on this platform is kinda being pretty in 18. Do they really like me for who I am or just to .. (=

lol, yes being rich here is like being pretty, and being pretty will get you money here as well, it has been done before. Yes even if there were 9000 human followers, there wouldn't be 9000 comments propose, but there would probably be more than what there currently is. I have enough trouble with replying to comments on this post am previous one that had over 50 comments. Takes up a lot of my time.

Lately there were lots of people who noticed bot trails with new followers. Many wrote about it, like I did also. Meanwhile it looks like it already stopped.

https://steemit.com/scam/@crypto-econom1st/investigation-of-bot-trails-with-huge-number-of-new-followers

I prefer to only see my real actual followers. Now we all look like we are really something. But in reality most of us are far from popular.

I think that's because of a new account called tribesteemup, and many people follow that curation trail when they vote.

I really don't see any connection between @tribesteemup and those bot trails with new followers. Why do you think there is a connection?
Or did I perhaps understand you incorrect?

I think there's a kind of bot with followers every time a post is made, it really happens to me that in every post I get at least 20 @ginabot notifications from new followers, which mostly have the same time, reputation and sp, I haven't received at least one comment and at least one positive vote from any of them, so I don't think they're real followers, but in the end what counts is that your followers are loyal, so much or little, I know that many support your content, congratulations on your new number of followers.

Indeed, they aren't real. What counts is real people like you, thank you.

I have noticed the same (except for the followers being in the thousands or having 100 people follow my work). I posted a lot the last couple of weeks and according to SteemWorld I would get 5-7 followers in batches that were all newer accounts. I assume that they have the same owner and are all bot accounts.

I personally am not a fan of the inflated follower list due to the bots. Almost dislike them as much as the spam sent to my wallet from the resteem scammers.

Yes, all the spam and inflated followers in automation and bots... :(

Congratulations. I don't remember exactly when I started following you but I've been reading your posts from time to time.

I have noticed the dead follower issue myself, too. It's probably new users seeing someone of high rep and/or high SP in hopes of seeing something even mildly interesting from that user every once in a while and then dropping a low-effort comment to get an upvote.

When it comes to the number of followers it's the order of magnitude that counts and not the number. I will hopefully be at 1000 followers this summer (911 at the moment). The next milestone is 10,000 or maybe, and that's a big maybe, 5,000. This actually something worth studying the number of, say weekly, upvoters seems to be a logarithmic function of the number of followers. So, while the exact number of followers is almost meaningless, having 20,000 followers is very, very different from having 1,000 followers.

Yes, it's a nice number to have. Thank you :-)

A few times after I would post, instantly 20 more followers. Then the next maybe 1-2. Then the next 15. I went from 800 to over 1000 really fast, as in a matter of a couple weeks.
Bots bots lovely bots that is what I think it is.
Just my .02

Yeah, it didn't used to be this way.

Lol, this is a great achievement. You deserve your followers because, you've got a vet informative blog. Kudos @krnel

This is fascinating..I notice every time I post the followers go up. I am one who loves to grow organically. I'd rather have a following of people who actually appreciate my content. The numbers do look good and attract more people, hopefully some that actually read our stuff.

lol, yes the numbers look good and probably do attract more people.

Interesting, seems to be the great question these days. I made a post about it yesterday (in french). IMHO, I think these are resteems services who count on a reciprocal follow to build their own followers base, to sell us their services then.

I tested one of these resteemers, it's just bullshit, and brought me absolutely nothing. Their own followers are not interested in what they post either, so...

Yes, all the resteem services are junk. Keep your money.

wow mate congratulations for reaching such a huge amount of followers!

I do think there are a lot of users just following others when they make a new post, but either way it is a nice number you have there :P

Do you not care if the follower count isn't really the amount of people who follow your content?

I think it is normal and it happens in every website that shows a follower number.

Would you prefer to have your follower count reflect lower numbers of people who actually follow you instead?

Yeah because it would be a more honest number

Thank you :-) I agree with your assessment.

I am really following. Now let's find out about the other 8,999

LOL :P

I first read your post. I feel you are a good person. there you also explained you have joined steemit since 2016 I think you are not new. I feel I have a lot to learn in people like you. Start the day I make sure it will be your new followers. And I would love to interact with you in your comment field. Greetings know and thank you.

Thanks for the appreciation :)

I'm a new follower. I have around 130, and think about half see my posts.

When people are not agreeable and open to honest comments, some of us just bugger off. :-)

Your blog continue to inspire people in the ecosystem, which is informative enlightening, educative and entertaining .

Congratulation for achieving another great milestone of getting 9000 followers @krnel better days ahead boss !

Thanks ;)

Commenting so you know that I am not ded follower :P

LOL ;)

It is just me! ;)

Haha, lucky me! :P

My conspiracy radar says its somebody padding the numbers to make us look busier than we really are.
Some coder has been tasked with making us look good.
So, lots of sock puppets fake following everybody to meet idealized quotas.

LOL, could be :P

I may not respond to every post you ride however I feel I'm a true follower of your writing and speaking of Truth. I know there's a lot of dead followers out there and I feel your pain. Hang in there and congratulations on a true milestone you deserve it. @krnel

Thanks ;)