150,000+ Twitter Followers and the Dirty Little Secret on Social Media Numbers

151k FollowersI just passed 150k followers on Twitter (click picture) and thought it would be a good time to offer a comment on Twitter followers, Facebook “likes,” how many “circles” you’re in on Google+, etc.

The dirty little secret is numbers are so, so deceiving.

As it has to do with Twitter, there are so many millions of fake following accounts (some to boost the numbers on certain politicians’ sites?). It’s also become my experience that approximately 25% or more of Twitter followers fall under the category of “inactive” (having NOT tweeted in a month or more). Now that would be about 37,500 of mine! (but I’ve been cleaning my account recently so it’s under approximately 20k now for me).

And when it comes to Facebook, you do know that Facebook “controls” how many Friends and people who have “liked” your business/ministry page see your posts as they are trying to get you to buy ads? I’ve read that only about 8% of your people see a status update at any given time. It can be higher for the more active accounts, but it’s pretty miniscule across the board.

And so the next time you find somebody bragging about their numbers, you’ll be thinking like me, “Well, let’s qualify that now.” 😉

About Pastor Mike

Pastor Mike is making the most of web technologies to encourage disciples. A self-proclaimed “twitterholic,” one twitter follower describes him as the “jogging, blogging, tweeting Pastor.” Visits to Pastor Mike’s blog (A Heart For God) number in the hundreds of thousands. His video blogs have been viewed over a half a million times.