Followers

in #followers6 years ago

As you may have noticed, there is no platform around anymore that doesn't count followers. Even Reddit is now trying to turn into a social media platform by giving accounts a way to follow other accounts. Too many checking the amount of followers an account has is their main point of judging the importance of the person/account and that has brought a lot of unnecessary spam and services onto Steem as well.

When I first landed on this platform I promised myself that I would not cheat to gain a lot of followers, for one because I wanted to see how they would grow naturally with my activity and connections combined with the growth in the userbase, but also because I despised the way other platforms gave so much importance to followers making every content creator beg/ask/tell people to follow them constantly. It was kind of disgusting in a way, every youtuber would tell people to follow/like and subscribe to his channel at the beginning and end of their video as if viewers were not aware that they could do these few things if they actually liked the content. In the creators mind it didn't matter though that a few users would get so annoyed that it would backfire because they knew that it worked - reminding people to follow them kept working time and time again because it cost nothing and most viewers didn't care about their subscriber list or which videos they added to their likes.

I strove for genuine followers because I was sick and tired of people giving so much importance to having the most or competing against others in it. So many kept cheating their way through a bigger following by doing things like spam following accounts, hoping they'd follow back to later unfollow everyone again knowing most would not notice and keep staying followed. Placing comments on important posts they knew would get a lot of views and self-voting their comment to the top for more attention, stuff like that. I've held myself back many times to not start unnecessary fights when I noticed people doing this but it kept bothering me and I never wanted to stoop down to their level.

To this day I have never asked anyone to follow me, I never end my posts with "follow and upvote", etc. I realize I may have lost a lot of potential followers or rewards due to that but I didn't care about that.

How come you have so many followers then? You might wonder. Well, I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that a lot of it has to do with my voting power. I don't often hit trending and for the longest time I voted on my own posts later to not stay in the Hot section a long time and to reward the users curating my posts more, but people do like to follow users with a lot of influence. I don't doubt that by running the @ocd project and manually voting on as many unique accounts as possible over the months it has automatically brought me a lot of followers. I was not doing bad before that, I was actively engaged in the small community at the time and being active daily for the past - almost - two years sure has helped, but voting power and influence and how you use it are a big factor too.

What I wanted to highlight in this post though, and why users should not care a lot about the amount of followers they have is that on Steem it doesn't matter a lot. An account can have a lot of followers that are not active anymore or don't curate their feed ever. An account can have a lot of followers that have barely any stake or influence - these are usually the accounts those resteem services use to try and make you pay for them. Many on the platform realize that these accounts are nothing but trying to make some quick money and they usually flag them - but they have gotten smarter and stopped commenting before starting their services through wallet memo's. Bright side is that once Steem becomes expensive enough it will cost them quite some money to spam 0.001 Steem memo's, one can hope that time comes soon. They do often trick newcomers though, else they wouldn't keep doing it.

If you are not aware, there is a nice tool on Steemdb.com (created by @jesta) that shows you the amount of Steem Power of your followers: https://steemdb.com/accounts/followers_mvest?page=4
As you can see I'm currently on 43rd place but even that doesn't mean a lot considering many may not be actively curating anymore.

For any newcomers reading this, it really is not important the amount of followers you have and the rate you are gaining them, the important part is to connect with like-minded users that share your interests and want to read your posts. There are still a lot of people that curate their feed which is one of the few ways I nowadays enjoy finding and reading posts I like and if you don't have an active feed because you are so new to the platform you can look for a few authors you like and check out their feed by simple going to: https://steemit.com/@username/feed
Everything on Steem is public and open-source, try and make the most of it to increase your connections and enjoy the platform without thinking of the money aspect too much in the beginning. That will come later, naturally this way.

I didn't make this post to brag about my follower amount if that's what you were thinking, there are tons of users that have way less followers than me and earning a lot more rewards by either buying votes or actively vote-trading. I just want to point out that the amount does not matter - what matters is who your followers are and I would try to make sure they are the right ones instead of rushing into your Steem experience and trying to do too much and scattering around your posts into too many different topics.

There is a community on Steem about pretty much everything already even before Hivemind (Communities) is released, check which ones you want to connet to through Steem.chat, discord and other chats. There are also a lot of curation groups still trying to actively find authors that haven't received enough attention but are providing quality content out there.

Feel free to ask questions if there is anything on your mind, I hope this post helped you realize a few things.

Thanks for reading.


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Yes, It does not matter. Of my 2700 or so followers only about 20-30 are active followers. But these 20-30 are such awesome people that they are all that matters. Always contributing great value and friendship.

I do however think that a lot of people is trying to be super active in comment fields in order to attract a whale - not necesarilly a lot of followers. One whale is for many more important than 1000 plankton. There is no hiding the fact that many are looking for that instead of nescesarilly (?? nope..wrong again..hope I never get that word in a spelling bee contest) friendship and community..and of course that is often where they make their mistake.

For most people though you will have to settle with community and discussion and not 5 super whales upvoting your every shitty comment and blog post. There are so many things against you. Blog about wrong stuff - no one is gonna risk upvoting you - at least not whales that are friends with other whales who might be politically correct etc. Blog too much and they will remove you from auto upvote. Blog to little and the same happens and so on and so forth.

So I think the best tactic here is to be true..if you are a white identitarian or a snowflake SJW..just be that and enjoy discussion and community. Don't think so much about earning. It will come..or not. Ultimately there are only three things that are required to earn money here:

  1. Go in with a lot of money
  2. Know whales
  3. Contribute with great content over time and hope for the best

Only number 2 is guaranteed to give you significant earnings from blogposts.

While an upvote of a whale would create a small celebration I will not chase them!
Also one may not forget that even the smallest red fish can turn into a whale! Okay small chance these days but still!
I do post because I like to interact and I do comment because I like to interact and do see the money part as a nice side effect.
Every steem earned is a pure bonus for me. I don’t need to depend on my steem earning in my real offline life! For some here it is a complete different story!
But yes luck is involved that the right ones do spot your post! Quality or not!

Good point. Always take good care of your friends here. A little bit of money is a nice side effect, but its speculative as well..so it might even not earn you anything in the long run. Especially if you've invested in Steem. So its important to find other values here other than just money. For most of us its a hobby where we make a little pocket change on the side, and we are invested in the long run as we are excited to see where this crypto-ship takes us. :)

post a very useful, thanks for sharing, I have vote and resteem your post. I am very glad to know you, you exceptional @acidyo

If honest people like you still walk the face of this earth then believe me , it’d be a better place for all of us and this is also applicable to Steemit as a platform , a community and a big and yet not grown social media.
I’ve seen lots and lots of people do this , when I just got in , the first thing I know is steemengine and I used it for quite a few days and when I got to realize it’s not vote it , they just take my upvote and follow and I get not what I was told to get . I moved on and since then , my music has brought many to me. Before now my following are much more than my followers but with honesty and hard work, I have more followers now.
I totally get the concept of you not bragging about you followers but I’m certain it’s a proud thing to be able to tell you got them without cheat, now that’s worth bragging about.
I totally agree your steem power contributed to 50% of the numbers of followers you have right now , this is very simple to understand.
Talking to a friend, a teacher and a mentor today through the comment section of her post @reddust
She stated that ....

We need all the help we can get cause so many bad things happening in the world today.

It is not only in the world , it’s happening right here on steemit and we actually need all the help we can get to stop this . Thanks @acidyo for such a wonderful topic of discussion

I agree with you about the importance of followers..or should I say unimportance.

Too many make a big deal about getting a large number of followers. I find of the 4300 that I have, very few are regular reader/commenting on my content. I imagine the vast percentage of them are not even on STEEM anymore.

I played the following game at one point and my feed was a mess. It was too much when I was following over 1000 people. I now keep it at 400 which is manageable but could use even more culling.

I think the communities upgrade will alter things greatly. My view is there is going to be the establishment of interaction based upon likes. Then we will see people interacting with each other on a much more personal level.

I do not even pay attention to the number of followers one has. For example, I could not tell you whether you have 500 or 50,000 followers...I didnt even pay attention so I have no clue. There are other metrics like reputation although that can be gamed too.

So I just look at the quality of the posts and if it interests me, I click on it.

@taskmaster I could write genuine and decent comments on almost all of your posts. To be honest the reason that I don’t is that it feels luke spamming. The same goes for @tarazkp!
Both of you were my biggest income in my early days on the platform! Thanks for creating a great interaction platform. We only have to use it!
So if I dont comment on one of your next posts it is not that I am not interested but because I don’t want to spam you guys!

I never look at a quality comment as spam @fullcoverbetting.

This site needs a lot more commenting. Genuine comments are like gold to those who write posts. Go to any post and you will see the great post...nice article...etc...

There are only a handful of genuine ones that even apply to the topic let alone can start a discussion.

Thx I will keep this in mind next time. But for the moment almost all my time is spend on administrating my steem world cup contest!
Feel free to join. It only takes 5 minutes, its free and there are no upvote, resteem or follow requirements! It would consider it an honor if one of the most respected Steemians would participate!

I now keep it at 400 which is manageable but could use even more culling.

Cull those who only post in the good times ;)

I was just considering what to post about early today and this topic stood out for me. I follow a small section of the accounts that follow mine. In the early days of Twitter, I used to follow back everyone that followed me. This gave me a number of dormant/useless accounts and I learned from that.

On Steemit, I have a core group of people who create interesting posts and leave thoughtful comments. I usually ask a question at the end to spark discussion and a call to action as well. Anyone who leaves a real comment gets a response from me, and an upvote if I have enough VP.

I do believe there is something to be said for "social proof." Working in retail, one thing we learned was that shoppers are more likely to purchase something if the shelves are full and they see other shoppers browsing as well.

The best thing we can do to support Steemit is to: create engaging content, and interact like the real people that we are.

This is so good. I love the way you have elucidated the unimportance of many followers on the steem blockchain. I often wonder why people beg to have followers because almost all these followers do not even check your blog or even if your post appears on their feeds, they give it little or no attention at all.

An account can have a lot of followers that are not active anymore or don't curate their feed ever. An account can have a lot of followers that have barely any stake or influence

I am even not a fan of most post promotion platforms because at the end, it is an almost insignificant reward you get from it. Actually, for a user with so much influence (in terms of large steem power), it is easier to get many followers without asking of begging for them. The challenge is really with newbies and minnows to be able to keep that level of sanity by allowing followers to come naturally.

@tolustx Newbies when they join the platform in the first weeks, think that followers play a big role here, which is not the case. Thats why they beg for following and upvotes. I have never asked someone for a follow or an upvote, but was always excited to see the number of my followers increase day by day. Now when I check them, I find the most of them inactive or already left the platform. It is really sad that many people gave up very early.
In my first day I used to see people with about 50 reputation score as the Gods of Steemit and followed many of them. Many also followed me back and supported me until this moment.
Now I understand everything about followers, reputation scores and Steemit itself. The more time we spend here, the more we learn :)

Sure, every newbie can be confused or misled at the beginning but the more you get familiar with the platform, the more one should improve. I even unfollowed users that I didn't see as beneficial to me - All those I ignorantly followed when I first joined steemit. My feeds was then flooded with irrelevant posts and annoying ones. I had to take action and unfollow many of them.

I have e however asked for upvotes before. I just needed the encouragement or I needed help winning a contest then. I do post promotion sometimes, not for the upvotes but for more people to see the post. It is discouraging if you task you brain to make a post but at the end, only 2 people view the content of the post. It is just like a waste of time.

I did the same. I was following 3000 at the beginning, but dont even check their content about crypto and news. Now I have 200, but I like what I see in my feed :)
I understand that! Actually I feel that I am going through the same thing now. I have 3000 followers but get upvotes for hardly 50 or less. I dont even think that my content is that bad as I spend hours working on it.
The problem is bots! People use bots to upvote others and they dont come online. Also in the past weeks I feel that we are the same users here. many people that I knew are not more active or maybe taking a break coz the Steem price is a bit down.

Back in the day I usually never even gave stars(omg so old) to YouTube videos, I only started giving likes on the platform when YouTubers started almost begging for them around 2012 when YouTube switched to their new algorithm...

Regarding follower counts, yeah I have to agree they really don't have that much weight because I have around 500 but you never get that sort of engagement anyways, I only get upvotes and comments from a few of my followers and a few extra people that happen to run by my posts.

I think steem works better if instead of focusing on big follower numbers you go ahead and become part of communities and create relationships with people, I rather have 5 friends than 5000 followers 😍

Never cared about the number of followers (Oh wait I don't have too much anyway nvm). Only relevant thing is the people that you connect with. In communities that you participate.
It's better just to enjoy yourself and become like fish in the water.
For me steemit is not just a way to earn money. It's a realisation of being a member of the new movement, new era that will change the world.

I know you might not get to come back to this post to read the comments again as this comment of mine is coming really late because I just saw this post of urs but I just felt u still needed to join the conversation.

The rate at which people beg to be followed on the steem blockchain is alarming. Sometimes I even ask myself if I am doing anything wrong by not asking for followers.

When i came in newly and as a novice. I didn't know what the followers were actuaoly for and so I was canvassing for followers up and down until one day I decided to ask myself what the usefulness of these followers were as I still make posts and see them at $0.01 at the end of seven days.

I thought it was the followers duty to read and upvote your posts if they like it but they don't.

After weighing all these, I totally decided not to care anymore about followers and just kept doing my thing.

Followers are a great thing when the number gets closer to success
A great article that is really great and well published

I have read your post repeatedly, I am touched by your principles in this platform, and I will follow as you say in this post, the keyword that appeals to me is, "do not beg to be ourselves" is very relevant, accept love has shared the ideology that should be done.

I'm not really excited about having plenty followers because most of then are just dormant. I prefer to have few active ones.

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