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This makes me wonder: How many Instagram influencers are there in total? What is the percentage of influencers in the entire population of (active) users? At so

by astrea 7y ago

This makes me wonder: How many Instagram influencers are there in total? What is the percentage of influencers in the entire population of (active) users? At some point it's just influencers influencing each other, right?

asaddhamani 7y ago
Everyone and their grandmother is an "influencer" on Instagram. Sounds so cringey.
rightbyte 7y ago
The user numbers are probably grossly exaggerated by bots. I get a feeling the news feed of long time users get so spammy that "real content" gets lost. I've made a twitter account for my niche real estate statistics site and the amount of answer I get from people that are following many users is minuscule. People with less followers are more prone to answering. (NB: I'm not spamming my site to them, but like trying to talk about estate prices with people that are talking about real estate prices). It's like what I write disappears when writing to those people. Twitter feels like a place where user involuntarily stalk the elite rather than a social network. Instagram the same thing. The feed algorithm is hugely favoring algorithmic "friends" and popular users, most likely.
- rchaud 7y ago
  > Twitter feels like a place where user involuntarily stalk the elite rather than a social network. I've often felt similarly. Twitter has always seemed more of a "broadcast" type of network, with personalities/small companies doing the "interact with users" thing only until they make it big, at which point it becomes all advertising, all the time.
MrMember 7y ago
Probably depends how you define "influencer." I remember reading a few months ago about "fake" influencers who aren't getting paid but pretend to shill products anyway so people think they are an influencer.
- Topgamer7 7y ago
  Isn't this like the majority of marketing though. Fake it till you make it?
- rdiddly 7y ago
  Wow, so they're basically pretending to be marketers, as a marketing move to market themselves to marketers, in hopes of becoming marketers? If there's a point on the spectrum that's more "meta" and further away from the idea of "connecting & sharing with friends" I don't know what it is. Maybe it would be whoever's out there marketing themselves as fake followers to help would-be marketers market themselves to marketers? Or marketing themselves as marketing coaches to help would-be marketers market to marketers? You know they're probably out there.
  - rococode 7y ago
    It may not even necessarily be to become marketers. There are certain positive implications about attractiveness and coolness associated with influencers, so some people may just want their "friends" (who are their actual followers) to think that they're influencers.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Wow, so they're basically pretending to be marketers, as a marketing move to market themselves to marketers, in hopes of becoming marketers? Isn't that the ages old, "fake it till you make it"?
- tracer4201 7y ago
  This is sad. Are these children or adults? Do they have careers and do this as a side gig?
  - reidjs 7y ago
    It is very difficult to get a decent job for many people, perhaps they see it as an opportunity for such.
- 7y ago
Pandabob 7y ago
There are actually multiple levels of (Instagram) influencing. On the one end you have your mega influencers like Kylie Jenner. On the other there, are so called nano influencers, with as few as a thousand followers (and up to 10k). Usually, the fewer followers you have, the more engagement you can get from your followers and that's something companies will pay for. Also, most nano influencers are just doing it as a side gig for some free stuff, so it might actually be kind of economical as a marketing channel for many consumer companies (YMMV of course).
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  Yeah, "nano influencer" is basically the Avon lady/Tupperware party host of this decade.
  - zebraflask 7y ago
    That is both a cogent and hilariously accurate description.
    - willdotphipps 7y ago
      cogent? whats that mean?
      - satori99 7y ago
        A clear and convincing argument
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - seattle_spring 7y ago
        Heads up: If you're using Chrome, you can highlight a word, right click / context menu, and the very first option will be "Look up <word>".
  - 7y ago
nordsieck 7y ago
> What is the percentage of influencers in the entire population of (active) users? To an extent, everyone is an influencer: if you tell another person about an experience you had, you were influencing them. In other words, influence is an analog scale, not a binary switch. As for how influence is distributed, influence is a secondary property of a person, that is to say that one's success at being an influencer is dependent on other secondary properties (skill at writing, photography/videography skills, etc.) and primary properties (sexual attractiveness being a big one). Since it is a secondary property, the distribution will look like a logarithmic distribution (it may not actually be a logarithmic distribution, but the general shape will be correct, as opposed to a Gaussian distribution, for example).
oldjokes 7y ago
I love how we're all just using this invented marketing term "influencer" as if it's actually a real thing (it is not a real thing). It is slightly less obnoxious than just calling it "first class" vs. "commoners" instagram, but still pretty obnoxious nonetheless.
- mc32 7y ago
  Some people are making money off of it. It may be frivolous or vacuous or derided, but someone is willing to pay for the phenomenon and “platforms” are making money of this belief as well.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  "Influencer" is a polite euphemism for "Narcissist".
  - bigiain 7y ago
    Only in the same way as "entrepreneur" is... Instagram "influencers" are just side-hustling with what they've got at their disposal, it's quite possible that if they were writing iOS apps as a side hustle instead we'd be championing them here...
    - rchaud 7y ago
      > if they were writing iOS apps as a side hustle instead we'd be championing them here If that were the case, I'd wager there'd be a similar number of "BrandonM" style comments about how what they're building "doesn't need to be an app" and was how they could have made a better version over the weekend.
- yomly 7y ago
  The word itself is a touch cringeworthy but the fact that the term is now ubiquitous should really be a hint of how big this phenomenon is. If you are unable to see the value in influencers (from a business perspective) it would simply suggest you are part of a segment that aren't engaged by them. If so don't let that fool you into underestimating the effect these people are having. Their audiences are highly engaged and are the same people who don't watch any TV and have adblock installed.
waffleguy 7y ago
It’s turtles all the way down
Alex3917 7y ago
> How many Instagram influencers are there in total? Having worked in this space back in 2010, I can say that at the time about 150 million Americans had a blog, but only about 10,000 had 10,000 or more subscribers. The numbers are bigger now with the popularity of platforms like Twitter / YouTube / Instagram / Twitch, but only a few times bigger, not orders of magnitude bigger.
- asdff 7y ago
  Half the entire population had a blog?
  - nvr219 7y ago
    yeah
    - bigiain 7y ago
      Yeah, nah... Probably more accurately maybe 10% of the population had 10 or so abandoned blog-starts. (I've never "been a blogger", but I'm sure there's remnants of at least 5 or 10 failed attempts on my part to become one - littered in archive.org, search engine indexes, and web hosting that's not yet expired...)
  - Alex3917 7y ago
    Think of all the people who had accounts on Live Journal, Blogger, Tumblr, etc. It used to be much easier to create a blog than it is today.
    - hi5eyes 7y ago
      it's even easier to blog now just make an instagram it's harder to stand out
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Theodores 7y ago
I am also wondering ho many techniques - or tropes - there are that go with the territory. I am thinking of archiving the classics of each type. The stupid giveaways, the cliched food pictures, the whole lot needs to just have the definitive versions of each genre catalogued.

by astrea 7y ago

asaddhamani 7y ago

Everyone and their grandmother is an "influencer" on Instagram. Sounds so cringey.

rightbyte 7y ago

The user numbers are probably grossly exaggerated by bots. I get a feeling the news feed of long time users get so spammy that "real content" gets lost. I've made a twitter account for my niche real estate statistics site and the amount of answer I get from people that are following many users is minuscule. People with less followers are more prone to answering. (NB: I'm not spamming my site to them, but like trying to talk about estate prices with people that are talking about real estate prices). It's like what I write disappears when writing to those people. Twitter feels like a place where user involuntarily stalk the elite rather than a social network. Instagram the same thing. The feed algorithm is hugely favoring algorithmic "friends" and popular users, most likely.

rchaud 7y ago
> Twitter feels like a place where user involuntarily stalk the elite rather than a social network. I've often felt similarly. Twitter has always seemed more of a "broadcast" type of network, with personalities/small companies doing the "interact with users" thing only until they make it big, at which point it becomes all advertising, all the time.

MrMember 7y ago

Probably depends how you define "influencer." I remember reading a few months ago about "fake" influencers who aren't getting paid but pretend to shill products anyway so people think they are an influencer.

Topgamer7 7y ago
Isn't this like the majority of marketing though. Fake it till you make it?
rdiddly 7y ago
Wow, so they're basically pretending to be marketers, as a marketing move to market themselves to marketers, in hopes of becoming marketers? If there's a point on the spectrum that's more "meta" and further away from the idea of "connecting & sharing with friends" I don't know what it is. Maybe it would be whoever's out there marketing themselves as fake followers to help would-be marketers market themselves to marketers? Or marketing themselves as marketing coaches to help would-be marketers market to marketers? You know they're probably out there.
- rococode 7y ago
  It may not even necessarily be to become marketers. There are certain positive implications about attractiveness and coolness associated with influencers, so some people may just want their "friends" (who are their actual followers) to think that they're influencers.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Wow, so they're basically pretending to be marketers, as a marketing move to market themselves to marketers, in hopes of becoming marketers? Isn't that the ages old, "fake it till you make it"?
tracer4201 7y ago
This is sad. Are these children or adults? Do they have careers and do this as a side gig?
- reidjs 7y ago
  It is very difficult to get a decent job for many people, perhaps they see it as an opportunity for such.
7y ago

Pandabob 7y ago

There are actually multiple levels of (Instagram) influencing. On the one end you have your mega influencers like Kylie Jenner. On the other there, are so called nano influencers, with as few as a thousand followers (and up to 10k). Usually, the fewer followers you have, the more engagement you can get from your followers and that's something companies will pay for. Also, most nano influencers are just doing it as a side gig for some free stuff, so it might actually be kind of economical as a marketing channel for many consumer companies (YMMV of course).

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Yeah, "nano influencer" is basically the Avon lady/Tupperware party host of this decade.
- zebraflask 7y ago
  That is both a cogent and hilariously accurate description.
  - willdotphipps 7y ago
    cogent? whats that mean?
    - satori99 7y ago
      A clear and convincing argument
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - seattle_spring 7y ago
      Heads up: If you're using Chrome, you can highlight a word, right click / context menu, and the very first option will be "Look up <word>".
- 7y ago

nordsieck 7y ago

> What is the percentage of influencers in the entire population of (active) users? To an extent, everyone is an influencer: if you tell another person about an experience you had, you were influencing them. In other words, influence is an analog scale, not a binary switch. As for how influence is distributed, influence is a secondary property of a person, that is to say that one's success at being an influencer is dependent on other secondary properties (skill at writing, photography/videography skills, etc.) and primary properties (sexual attractiveness being a big one). Since it is a secondary property, the distribution will look like a logarithmic distribution (it may not actually be a logarithmic distribution, but the general shape will be correct, as opposed to a Gaussian distribution, for example).

oldjokes 7y ago

I love how we're all just using this invented marketing term "influencer" as if it's actually a real thing (it is not a real thing). It is slightly less obnoxious than just calling it "first class" vs. "commoners" instagram, but still pretty obnoxious nonetheless.

mc32 7y ago
Some people are making money off of it. It may be frivolous or vacuous or derided, but someone is willing to pay for the phenomenon and “platforms” are making money of this belief as well.
DonHopkins 7y ago
"Influencer" is a polite euphemism for "Narcissist".
- bigiain 7y ago
  Only in the same way as "entrepreneur" is... Instagram "influencers" are just side-hustling with what they've got at their disposal, it's quite possible that if they were writing iOS apps as a side hustle instead we'd be championing them here...
  - rchaud 7y ago
    > if they were writing iOS apps as a side hustle instead we'd be championing them here If that were the case, I'd wager there'd be a similar number of "BrandonM" style comments about how what they're building "doesn't need to be an app" and was how they could have made a better version over the weekend.
yomly 7y ago
The word itself is a touch cringeworthy but the fact that the term is now ubiquitous should really be a hint of how big this phenomenon is. If you are unable to see the value in influencers (from a business perspective) it would simply suggest you are part of a segment that aren't engaged by them. If so don't let that fool you into underestimating the effect these people are having. Their audiences are highly engaged and are the same people who don't watch any TV and have adblock installed.

waffleguy 7y ago

It’s turtles all the way down

Alex3917 7y ago

> How many Instagram influencers are there in total? Having worked in this space back in 2010, I can say that at the time about 150 million Americans had a blog, but only about 10,000 had 10,000 or more subscribers. The numbers are bigger now with the popularity of platforms like Twitter / YouTube / Instagram / Twitch, but only a few times bigger, not orders of magnitude bigger.

asdff 7y ago
Half the entire population had a blog?
- nvr219 7y ago
  yeah
  - bigiain 7y ago
    Yeah, nah... Probably more accurately maybe 10% of the population had 10 or so abandoned blog-starts. (I've never "been a blogger", but I'm sure there's remnants of at least 5 or 10 failed attempts on my part to become one - littered in archive.org, search engine indexes, and web hosting that's not yet expired...)
- Alex3917 7y ago
  Think of all the people who had accounts on Live Journal, Blogger, Tumblr, etc. It used to be much easier to create a blog than it is today.
  - hi5eyes 7y ago
    it's even easier to blog now just make an instagram it's harder to stand out
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Theodores 7y ago

I am also wondering ho many techniques - or tropes - there are that go with the territory. I am thinking of archiving the classics of each type. The stupid giveaways, the cliched food pictures, the whole lot needs to just have the definitive versions of each genre catalogued.