I've reached 9000 followers! Wo0ot! But, how many are really following?
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.
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. :)
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 :-)
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 :-)
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 :/