5 ms·

Everyone Wants to Be an Influencer

48 points by rurp 5y ago

data4lyfe 5y ago
It's incredibly easy to be a niche influencer nowadays. If I write a blog post on a niche subject that I know a lot about, I can easily take that blog post, re-word it a bit, and record it for Youtube with some light edits -> example data science account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcQx1UnmorvmSEZef4X7-6g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcQx1UnmorvmSEZef4X7-6g Youtube recommendation algorithm is so good at rewarding continuous creators. The difficulty is that the effort in making videos is surprisingly high and scaling is hard.
Closi 5y ago
A 3 billion dollar industry with 50 million participants? That’s $60 each on average. It’s not terribly surprising that an agency has a 30% acceptance rate - they probably accept anyone that isn’t outwardly racist and has more than 50 followers. Eh, this thing seems more hype than anything. There is definitely a role for influencer marketing, but inevitably the majority of the pie will be swallowed by a few participants in each product category.
- kongin 5y ago
  Sounds like they are missing the market segment of the outwardly racist, there's pennies to be made and they are ripe for disruption.
65 5y ago
Am I the only person who finds it incredibly hard to read Axios stories? The bullet points and bold text makes my eyes jump all over the screen.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I remember listening to an interview with a person involved in the design process. Apparently, it was a very conscious decision to make the important pieces immediately known followed by an more in-depth dive. Given lesser attentions spans, rationale seemed reasonable to me.
- floren 5y ago
  To me, it reads like a presentation prepared for upper management. The bolded headings would be standalone title cards. The text after each heading gets its own slide. The bullet points come on the next slide, fading in one after another as the presenter clicks the remote. It's expected that the manager will begin to daydream about golfing during the bullet point slides, so the info there isn't as important :)
- syspec 5y ago
  I absolutely love it, straight to the point. No time wasted describing cafe / restaurant they met to hold an interview, padding the article
pixelgeek 5y ago
Signs of the Apocalypse #3 More seriously, it seems to be an indicator of people being desperate enough to try anything to make a few bucks.
- echelon 5y ago
  People have always wanted this. Technology is a democratizing force that is giving people voice, greater reach, and a higher probability of success. Previously you had to be really lucky to bump into the right producers, casting agents, etc. Even if you were incredibly talented. Now you can find an audience from home. People didn't change. Technology did. This is only going to increase as the tools for creation get stronger and better. We'll have so much more art. Some of it will be great, and a lot more diverse interests (the long tail) will be catered to. TikTok is a stepping stone. Less Disney, more indie.
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    > People have always wanted this. That seems to be a dramatic over-generalization. > Technology is a democratizing force that is giving people voice, greater reach, and a higher probability of success. If it is so democratizing then why are all these people trying to become shills for the same sets of products from the same set of companies? The only thing that seems to be democratized is that now corporations are being more inclusive about the types of people that they will let advertise their products for them. That hardly seems like a win for anyone
Corinthian 5y ago
Are 'influencers' that much different from 'celebrities'? Some are famous purely for their looks, some for their talent, some for both, occasionally some for their lack of both. For me, it feels like we've always had influencers.
- vonadz 5y ago
  Yeah seems like what the internet has done to a lot of things; add an 'e' to the front of it.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  But the whole point is that the reach and scale of social media means it's much easier to become an influencer, and furthermore you don't need to have some other celebrated skill (acting, sports, etc.) to get noticed.
  - Corinthian 5y ago
    Sure, the reach and scale is much bigger. But I still don't see how that distinguishes an influencer from a celebrity. We've had celebrities since before electricity. The reach and scale of print was greater than word of mouth, the reach and scale of radio was greater than print, the reach and scale of TV was greater than radio. The internet is just another expansion of scope, but it's the same culture underneath. Never before have we felt the need to come up with a new word for celebrity. You could have argued at one point that the internet gives everyone an equal chance to become famous and influential. But even that is less true every day as agencies are increasingly required to stand out in an increasingly saturated market. I strongly dispute that celebrities need talent to get noticed too. That's never been true.
    - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
      Basically point is that, yes, all celebrities can be influencers, but not all influencers are anything I'd classify as "celebrities". There is a whole section in the article on "nano influencers", e.g. think "popular kid in school", not "rock star". Being able to monetize that level of popularity is a new thing.
debarshri 5y ago
Influencer is an outcome of doing an act of something. Act could be travelling, cooking, bodybuilding etc. To start doing something to become an influencer is an anti-thesis, it is destined to fail. I am remember colleague telling he ask his children what they wanted to be and they said influencer. Influencer as a career choices sounds like a pyramid scheme and paradox in some sorts, if everybody is influencer then no body is influencing.
- text70 5y ago
  That is unless, someone hires all the people that want to be infulencers to read ads to other people, in exchange for money.
peakaboo 5y ago
These influencers are just using their looks and charisma to sell products or ads in exchange for people feeling entertained for a few minutes. It's the same thing with celebrities a lot of normies look up to. They think these celebs are nicer or better people than ordinary people, when in fact there is nothing. One of the best parts of covid for me was how all these celebrities faded out and disappeared from view for a while. Thank you!
GDC7 5y ago
What is the definition of influencer anymore? To me people like MHKBD seem reviewer more than an influencers , but if you remove people like him basically all you are left is girls showing their goods on instagram hoping to get picked up by some MLM beauty company.
- kosasbest 5y ago
  > What is the definition of influencer anymore? It's not really chasing fame as such, since fame is the default on the web now. The barrier to entry of being 'known' is so low now, that the oldskool notion of fame doesn't apply anymore. Hence Everyone in the title. Buy the latest iPhone, setup a few accounts and then you can start selling stuff really easily. You're also selling your personality too though, not just some product. The best influencers have insane charisma.
- mnd999 5y ago
  Chancer. They’re people with no obvious skills, talent or work ethic attempting to get stuff for free.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The article is about a marketing agency that represents people with significant social media followings. Now that YouTube and other platforms have become so diluted that ad revenue is minimal, it makes sense that anyone with a large following would seek an agency to help them find advertisers. I get the impression that most moderately successful YouTubers make significantly more money from in-video product advertisements than they do from YouTube's ad revenue sharing. It's also interesting how radioactive the word "influencer" has become in tech circles like HN. Nobody likes to think of their preferred internet media stars as "influencers", but they liberally apply the influencer label to internet celebrities they dislike. How often to you see Matt Levine (Money Stuff newsletter), Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten), Marques Brownleee (MKBHD), or Patrick McKenzie (patio11) described as influencers? All of them are (or have in the past) used their platforms to sell products or show ads, yet they have enough rapport in the tech community that people almost never describe them as influencers. If you pretend the ads and sales pitches don't exist, or wave them away as a necessary part of their business, it's easy to pretend they aren't actually influencers playing the influencer game. Instead, the "influencer" label has become synonymous with "fake person I don't like who shills products for money". In reality, a lot of the newsletters, YouTube channels, and blogs that the tech community loves to consume are also engaged in these very same influencer marketing circles. It's how the business works.
- Closi 5y ago
  > Instead, the "influencer" label has become synonymous with "fake person I don't like who shills products for money" I think the distaste for the word influencer is because it assumes influencing is the thing, where it is actually the output. Marques Brownlee is… a reviewer, who also makes money by doing sponsored spots. Mr Beast is really a director/producer/videomaker and makes interesting and fun videos, and “influences” by using his name to market burgers to make some extra money, but he does that because he is a video maker not because he is an “influencer”. While teens say they want to be influencers growing up, I think it would be more healthy for them to think about what they will do to become influential first. It’s like saying you want to be famous without deciding if you want to be a musician, actor or famous scientist - fame is the output not the title and shouldn’t usually be the goal.
JasonCEC 5y ago
I for one don't want to be an influencer. Social media is damaging to society, doing things for likes is damaging for the ego, and curating your world for Instagram or TikTok likes is choosing to live in a simulacra. No Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat, WeiBo, or TikTok for me ~ just Hacker News. Upvote me here so I know you agree and we can influence others not to be influencers.
- silisili 5y ago
  It's weird I just had this conversation last night. My wife asked if I could be 17 again, would I want to go back in time or be 17 now. I immediately blurted out back in time, and reminisced about how everything seemed simpler. No smartphones, no social media, no constant fear and hate mongering. Made me really sad for some reason. But part of that could just be getting old and resistant to change, as people are known to do.
  - hh3k0 5y ago
    Getting bullied in school was hard enough… I'd rather not go through that again with after-school bullying via social media on top of that. I'm glad I grew up without Facebook and the likes.
    - addingnumbers 5y ago
      If you go back in time to age 17 and continue attending public school, I think you're doing it wrong.
    - Johnny555 5y ago
      But if I could go back with the same knowledge I have now, the bullying becomes more tolerable when I know that one of the biggest bullies in high school will have ended up in and out of jail before finally dying of a drug overdose (he had a hard home life which led to his bullying and post high school problems), and that the high school jock that was the most popular guy in school ended up overweight and working in a car dealership... he turned out to be a nice guy though. It's hard to understand in high school that the class structure in high school completely falls apart at graduation. But the class structure in college is more permanent.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
w-j-w 5y ago
Influencer marketing done well is scary effective because audiences often have a parasocial relationship with these influencers. The main downside with influencer marketing is that you have less control over how your brand is presented. That is why influencer marketing works best with small brands that can easily track the effects of their marketing. Naturally, this is a good fit for the mobile app (games) market and small e-commerce brands.
dmje 5y ago
I’d rather chew my own leg off than be “an influencer”
cushychicken 5y ago
Huh. I thought everyone wanted to be a product manager.
- j_barbossa 5y ago
  Product manager, influencer or data scientist
yawaworht1978 5y ago
When I was a teenager, and mind you, that wasn't too long ago, the equivalents of today's influencers tried to sign up for modelling agencies, or dreamt to be in movies or become sports stars. In general, fame and money and what appears to be a sweet and easy lifestyle. Of course these sort of people have always advertised products, but at least they were.true models, real actors and skilled in sports. This has been digitalized now, now every nobody can try to be an influencer, it's a bit of all the above, just digital. Of course, it's oversaturated, most of them make nothing.
- Corinthian 5y ago
  Surely and influencer that has no influence, isn't an influencer at all?
ModernMech 5y ago
This is what happens when advertising becomes the primary economic output of your economy. It seems like there are too many people engaged directly in advertising, or working on products that are supported 100% by advertising dollars. How long until the economy is just 100% advertising? I'm sure if you really probe influencers, most of them would rather be engaged in creative pursuits. But those don't pay anything, so they have to go to where the dollars are if they want things like a house and food.
erik_landerholm 5y ago
Yeah, no.
xwdv 5y ago
There is another class of influencer that is often forgotten but is also very popular: The anti-influencer. Their goal is not to seek money or fame, it’s simply to watch the world burn and stimulate rage, all for a good laugh. They are not famous people so it’s not easy to name them or track their whereabouts, and their presence is often short lived. You can only see them in the moment. In the past, the politically incorrect term for such people would have been “trolls”.
joefife 5y ago
Do they? Do they really?
sys_64738 5y ago
Influencer is such a silly term. Some youtuber get s bunch of folk as fans so suddenly think they're somehow relevant to others. If everybody has this view then you have an ocean of folk who are trying to convince each other that they are somehow relevant. Meanwhile for most people life moves on but these influencers sound like they'll need to keep trying to reclaim their 15 mins of fame. I'm bored of the term already.

48 points by rurp 5y ago

It's incredibly easy to be a niche influencer nowadays. If I write a blog post on a niche subject that I know a lot about, I can easily take that blog post, re-word it a bit, and record it for Youtube with some light edits -> example data science account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcQx1UnmorvmSEZef4X7-6g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcQx1UnmorvmSEZef4X7-6g Youtube recommendation algorithm is so good at rewarding continuous creators. The difficulty is that the effort in making videos is surprisingly high and scaling is hard.

Closi 5y ago

A 3 billion dollar industry with 50 million participants? That’s $60 each on average. It’s not terribly surprising that an agency has a 30% acceptance rate - they probably accept anyone that isn’t outwardly racist and has more than 50 followers. Eh, this thing seems more hype than anything. There is definitely a role for influencer marketing, but inevitably the majority of the pie will be swallowed by a few participants in each product category.

kongin 5y ago
Sounds like they are missing the market segment of the outwardly racist, there's pennies to be made and they are ripe for disruption.

65 5y ago

Am I the only person who finds it incredibly hard to read Axios stories? The bullet points and bold text makes my eyes jump all over the screen.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I remember listening to an interview with a person involved in the design process. Apparently, it was a very conscious decision to make the important pieces immediately known followed by an more in-depth dive. Given lesser attentions spans, rationale seemed reasonable to me.
floren 5y ago
To me, it reads like a presentation prepared for upper management. The bolded headings would be standalone title cards. The text after each heading gets its own slide. The bullet points come on the next slide, fading in one after another as the presenter clicks the remote. It's expected that the manager will begin to daydream about golfing during the bullet point slides, so the info there isn't as important :)
syspec 5y ago
I absolutely love it, straight to the point. No time wasted describing cafe / restaurant they met to hold an interview, padding the article

pixelgeek 5y ago

Signs of the Apocalypse #3 More seriously, it seems to be an indicator of people being desperate enough to try anything to make a few bucks.

echelon 5y ago
People have always wanted this. Technology is a democratizing force that is giving people voice, greater reach, and a higher probability of success. Previously you had to be really lucky to bump into the right producers, casting agents, etc. Even if you were incredibly talented. Now you can find an audience from home. People didn't change. Technology did. This is only going to increase as the tools for creation get stronger and better. We'll have so much more art. Some of it will be great, and a lot more diverse interests (the long tail) will be catered to. TikTok is a stepping stone. Less Disney, more indie.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  > People have always wanted this. That seems to be a dramatic over-generalization. > Technology is a democratizing force that is giving people voice, greater reach, and a higher probability of success. If it is so democratizing then why are all these people trying to become shills for the same sets of products from the same set of companies? The only thing that seems to be democratized is that now corporations are being more inclusive about the types of people that they will let advertise their products for them. That hardly seems like a win for anyone

Corinthian 5y ago

Are 'influencers' that much different from 'celebrities'? Some are famous purely for their looks, some for their talent, some for both, occasionally some for their lack of both. For me, it feels like we've always had influencers.

vonadz 5y ago
Yeah seems like what the internet has done to a lot of things; add an 'e' to the front of it.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
But the whole point is that the reach and scale of social media means it's much easier to become an influencer, and furthermore you don't need to have some other celebrated skill (acting, sports, etc.) to get noticed.
- Corinthian 5y ago
  Sure, the reach and scale is much bigger. But I still don't see how that distinguishes an influencer from a celebrity. We've had celebrities since before electricity. The reach and scale of print was greater than word of mouth, the reach and scale of radio was greater than print, the reach and scale of TV was greater than radio. The internet is just another expansion of scope, but it's the same culture underneath. Never before have we felt the need to come up with a new word for celebrity. You could have argued at one point that the internet gives everyone an equal chance to become famous and influential. But even that is less true every day as agencies are increasingly required to stand out in an increasingly saturated market. I strongly dispute that celebrities need talent to get noticed too. That's never been true.
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    Basically point is that, yes, all celebrities can be influencers, but not all influencers are anything I'd classify as "celebrities". There is a whole section in the article on "nano influencers", e.g. think "popular kid in school", not "rock star". Being able to monetize that level of popularity is a new thing.

debarshri 5y ago

Influencer is an outcome of doing an act of something. Act could be travelling, cooking, bodybuilding etc. To start doing something to become an influencer is an anti-thesis, it is destined to fail. I am remember colleague telling he ask his children what they wanted to be and they said influencer. Influencer as a career choices sounds like a pyramid scheme and paradox in some sorts, if everybody is influencer then no body is influencing.

text70 5y ago
That is unless, someone hires all the people that want to be infulencers to read ads to other people, in exchange for money.

peakaboo 5y ago

These influencers are just using their looks and charisma to sell products or ads in exchange for people feeling entertained for a few minutes. It's the same thing with celebrities a lot of normies look up to. They think these celebs are nicer or better people than ordinary people, when in fact there is nothing. One of the best parts of covid for me was how all these celebrities faded out and disappeared from view for a while. Thank you!

GDC7 5y ago

What is the definition of influencer anymore? To me people like MHKBD seem reviewer more than an influencers , but if you remove people like him basically all you are left is girls showing their goods on instagram hoping to get picked up by some MLM beauty company.

kosasbest 5y ago
> What is the definition of influencer anymore? It's not really chasing fame as such, since fame is the default on the web now. The barrier to entry of being 'known' is so low now, that the oldskool notion of fame doesn't apply anymore. Hence Everyone in the title. Buy the latest iPhone, setup a few accounts and then you can start selling stuff really easily. You're also selling your personality too though, not just some product. The best influencers have insane charisma.
mnd999 5y ago
Chancer. They’re people with no obvious skills, talent or work ethic attempting to get stuff for free.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

The article is about a marketing agency that represents people with significant social media followings. Now that YouTube and other platforms have become so diluted that ad revenue is minimal, it makes sense that anyone with a large following would seek an agency to help them find advertisers. I get the impression that most moderately successful YouTubers make significantly more money from in-video product advertisements than they do from YouTube's ad revenue sharing. It's also interesting how radioactive the word "influencer" has become in tech circles like HN. Nobody likes to think of their preferred internet media stars as "influencers", but they liberally apply the influencer label to internet celebrities they dislike. How often to you see Matt Levine (Money Stuff newsletter), Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten), Marques Brownleee (MKBHD), or Patrick McKenzie (patio11) described as influencers? All of them are (or have in the past) used their platforms to sell products or show ads, yet they have enough rapport in the tech community that people almost never describe them as influencers. If you pretend the ads and sales pitches don't exist, or wave them away as a necessary part of their business, it's easy to pretend they aren't actually influencers playing the influencer game. Instead, the "influencer" label has become synonymous with "fake person I don't like who shills products for money". In reality, a lot of the newsletters, YouTube channels, and blogs that the tech community loves to consume are also engaged in these very same influencer marketing circles. It's how the business works.

Closi 5y ago
> Instead, the "influencer" label has become synonymous with "fake person I don't like who shills products for money" I think the distaste for the word influencer is because it assumes influencing is the thing, where it is actually the output. Marques Brownlee is… a reviewer, who also makes money by doing sponsored spots. Mr Beast is really a director/producer/videomaker and makes interesting and fun videos, and “influences” by using his name to market burgers to make some extra money, but he does that because he is a video maker not because he is an “influencer”. While teens say they want to be influencers growing up, I think it would be more healthy for them to think about what they will do to become influential first. It’s like saying you want to be famous without deciding if you want to be a musician, actor or famous scientist - fame is the output not the title and shouldn’t usually be the goal.

JasonCEC 5y ago

I for one don't want to be an influencer. Social media is damaging to society, doing things for likes is damaging for the ego, and curating your world for Instagram or TikTok likes is choosing to live in a simulacra. No Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat, WeiBo, or TikTok for me ~ just Hacker News. Upvote me here so I know you agree and we can influence others not to be influencers.

silisili 5y ago
It's weird I just had this conversation last night. My wife asked if I could be 17 again, would I want to go back in time or be 17 now. I immediately blurted out back in time, and reminisced about how everything seemed simpler. No smartphones, no social media, no constant fear and hate mongering. Made me really sad for some reason. But part of that could just be getting old and resistant to change, as people are known to do.
- hh3k0 5y ago
  Getting bullied in school was hard enough… I'd rather not go through that again with after-school bullying via social media on top of that. I'm glad I grew up without Facebook and the likes.
  - addingnumbers 5y ago
    If you go back in time to age 17 and continue attending public school, I think you're doing it wrong.
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    But if I could go back with the same knowledge I have now, the bullying becomes more tolerable when I know that one of the biggest bullies in high school will have ended up in and out of jail before finally dying of a drug overdose (he had a hard home life which led to his bullying and post high school problems), and that the high school jock that was the most popular guy in school ended up overweight and working in a car dealership... he turned out to be a nice guy though. It's hard to understand in high school that the class structure in high school completely falls apart at graduation. But the class structure in college is more permanent.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

w-j-w 5y ago

Influencer marketing done well is scary effective because audiences often have a parasocial relationship with these influencers. The main downside with influencer marketing is that you have less control over how your brand is presented. That is why influencer marketing works best with small brands that can easily track the effects of their marketing. Naturally, this is a good fit for the mobile app (games) market and small e-commerce brands.

dmje 5y ago

I’d rather chew my own leg off than be “an influencer”

cushychicken 5y ago

Huh. I thought everyone wanted to be a product manager.

j_barbossa 5y ago
Product manager, influencer or data scientist

yawaworht1978 5y ago

When I was a teenager, and mind you, that wasn't too long ago, the equivalents of today's influencers tried to sign up for modelling agencies, or dreamt to be in movies or become sports stars. In general, fame and money and what appears to be a sweet and easy lifestyle. Of course these sort of people have always advertised products, but at least they were.true models, real actors and skilled in sports. This has been digitalized now, now every nobody can try to be an influencer, it's a bit of all the above, just digital. Of course, it's oversaturated, most of them make nothing.

Corinthian 5y ago
Surely and influencer that has no influence, isn't an influencer at all?

ModernMech 5y ago

This is what happens when advertising becomes the primary economic output of your economy. It seems like there are too many people engaged directly in advertising, or working on products that are supported 100% by advertising dollars. How long until the economy is just 100% advertising? I'm sure if you really probe influencers, most of them would rather be engaged in creative pursuits. But those don't pay anything, so they have to go to where the dollars are if they want things like a house and food.

erik_landerholm 5y ago

Yeah, no.

xwdv 5y ago

There is another class of influencer that is often forgotten but is also very popular: The anti-influencer. Their goal is not to seek money or fame, it’s simply to watch the world burn and stimulate rage, all for a good laugh. They are not famous people so it’s not easy to name them or track their whereabouts, and their presence is often short lived. You can only see them in the moment. In the past, the politically incorrect term for such people would have been “trolls”.

joefife 5y ago

Do they? Do they really?

sys_64738 5y ago

Influencer is such a silly term. Some youtuber get s bunch of folk as fans so suddenly think they're somehow relevant to others. If everybody has this view then you have an ocean of folk who are trying to convince each other that they are somehow relevant. Meanwhile for most people life moves on but these influencers sound like they'll need to keep trying to reclaim their 15 mins of fame. I'm bored of the term already.