Followers vs. Account Age: A pointless data review: The Return · 2:27am May 7th
Earlier today, I was shooting the shit with Aklinstar about some of the statistics blogs I've done in the past and I noticed there was one I never did an update/follow-up on. I promptly dropped everything to do exactly that, which is because I'm deeply interested in stats and data and not at all because I'm frustrated with the way my current writing project is going because I can't find a character's voice and this is a good way to procrastinate.
So to double back a bit: the original blog was a response to a brief disagreement between myself and GaPJaxie about what counted as 'underappreciated authors'. For a contest that was being run at the time, there was an award for best story by an underappreciated author, which was defined as having less than 500 followers. I contested that was less about appreciation and more an account age check. Then four months later I did a quick bit of analysis on it to prove my point - and found that at the time, only fifteen accounts (out of 116,000) in the prior five years had passed the 500 mark.
Now three years later, let's take another look.
So my first caveats:
- Someone is going to ask, so I'll answer now. How I compiled all of this was manually. As in I went through each user page, looked at the registration date for the account, and then made tally marks on paper like a caveman. Yes, it took a lot of time. One day I will give in and learn Python to make a script for it or something, but by heaven today is not that day.
- Because of this, there may be an error somewhere. I did my best to double check my numbers so everything came out even but I can't rule out having missed something somewhere or adding wrong.
- I still don't quite know what to do about Buster Knutt, so I just counted both accounts.
- For the purposes of this, when I talk about 'ages', I'm eyeballing general time frames that represent the site's lifespan. 'Early' is 2011 to 2014 (circa S1-4); 'middle' is 2015 to 2019 (S5-9), and 'late' is 2020 to 2024 (post S9).
- I had originally planned to do a breakdown showing percentage of total accounts for a given year hit the 500+ mark. However the site's current inability to stop spambots has made that impractical. I could make some educated guesses, but with 80-90% of accounts made after 2020 being bots... Well, it'd be unreliable at best.
The first group is over 2000 followers. These are your massive movers and shakers, mostly from the early fandom. They're the names pretty much everyone knows and if you don't know the author you probably know their stories.
OVER 2000: 97 authors
2011: 29
2012: 45
2013: 14
2014: 5
2015: 1
2016: 0
2017: 3
2018: 0
2019: 0
2020: 0
2021: 0
2022: 0
2023: 0
2024: 0
Authors from the middle period: Hiver (2015); Some Leech (2017); An Intricate Disguise (2017); Clopficsinthecomments (2017)
Next up is the 2000-1000 bracket of people. Still huge, huge names that are pretty universal and massively influential, even if they aren't as runaway as the last set. Some of the more absent members at this level might slip past modern readers - I wasn't aware of RavensDagger until scanning through this, for example, but that's likely because they've been absent since 2016. Still, folks here are big-big.
OVER 1000: 238 authors
2011: 50
2012: 99
2013: 43
2014: 24
2015: 8
2016: 8
2017: 2
2018: 2
2019: 0
2020: 1
2021: 0
2022: 1
2023: 0
2024: 0
Authors from the middle period: Ebonyglow (2015); Damaged (2015); tom117z (2015); Harms Way (2015); Amber Spark (2015); Codex Ex Equus (2015); Rambling Writer (2015); Ice Star (2015); Israel Yabuki (2016); dracedomino (2016); LewdChaper (2016); TheOneWithoutAName (2016); Queen Sanguine Dreams (2016); Uh-hmmm (2016); Irrespective (2016); MassDriver (2016); Cackling Moron (2017); the7Saviors (2017); 23 KM To Nerdiness (2018); Lets Do This (2018)
Authors from the late period: Buster Knutt Reborn (2020); RunicTreetops (2022)
I went a bit more granular from this point - 1000+ was largely restricted to the early site adopters, and down below is where folks from the middle and late periods start to really show up. So I divided things next to the 1000-900 mark. Interestingly, it has almost the same demographics as the 1000+ bracket but generally more idle. There's a lot of 2011-2014 folks who are in here that probably would be 1000+ but didn't make it because they vanished some time ago.
OVER 900: 49 authors
2011: 9
2012: 19
2013: 11
2014: 5
2015: 4
2016: 0
2017: 0
2018: 0
2019: 0
2020: 1
2021: 0
2022: 0
2023: 0
2024: 0
Authors from the middle period: XenoPony (2015); Twilight is the BEST (2015); Meep the Changeling (2015); Cardinal Dan Productions (2015)
Authors from the late period: KKSlider (2020)
Next up: the 800s. This is where it starts to spread out more in terms of time. You also find a number of one hit wonders here - authors post-2012 who had one really big hit, sometimes with a follow-up.
OVER 800: 65 authors
2011: 14
2012: 27
2013: 11
2014: 5
2015: 3
2016: 2
2017: 1
2018: 0
2019: 2
2020: 0
2021: 0
2022: 0
2023: 0
2024: 0
Authors from the middle period: Lise (2015); Silvak (2015); DHeroRedMagma (2015); Rose Quill (2016); Dr Sharaz Jek (2017); Danish Dash (2019); Bobbles (2019)
The 700 range is where it tops 100 people in the set - and I wasn't able to really spot a common trend aside from this being the first bracket where I found more 'Who?' than authors I recognized.
OVER 700: 103 authors
2011: 6
2012: 42
2013: 21
2014: 14
2015: 8
2016: 7
2017: 3
2018: 1
2019: 0
2020: 1
2021: 0
2022: 0
2023: 0
2024: 0
Authors from the middle period: Elu (2015); Krickis (2015); Nordryd (2015); JackRipper (2015); CapNTilfy (2015); Oldtakufanboy (2015); Harmony Pie (2015);Nico-Stone Rupan (2015); The Bricklayer (2016); Kulpa (2016); JimmyHook19 (2016); Silver Butcher (2016); Jackelope (2016); garatheauthor (2016); 2Merr (2016); LucidDreamer (2017); Horse Girls Are Watching (2017); tkepner (2017); SockPuppet (2018)
Authors from the late period: Vis-A-Viscera (2020)
Now to the 600s, where only the coolest, smartest and best looking authors are. (Oh hey, I'm in this set! What a strange coincidence!)
OVER 600: 144 authors
2011: 20
2012: 63
2013: 26
2014: 12
2015: 12
2016: 2
2017: 2
2018: 1
2019: 2
2020: 4
2021: 0
2022: 0
2023: 0
2024: 0
Authors from the middle period: Pimapifi (2015); AkumaKami64 (2015); mrmidnight (2015); The Hat Man (2015); ASGeek2012 (2015); Charyb (2015); Crimmar (2015); MyLittleGeneration (2015); DumbDog (2015); Aprion (2015); Zatoichi Vokunkiin (2015); RadiantBeam (2015); Anon A Mous (2016); GMBlackjack (2016); CommanderApplejack (2017); Connorcooper (2017); X145 (2018); SpoonfedArt (2019); TCC56 (2019)
Authors from the late period: Boopy Doopy (2020); iAmSiNnEr (2020); Buster Knutt (2020); Burt (2020)
And lastly, the 500s.
OVER 500: 199 authors
2011: 26
2012: 84
2013: 28
2014: 25
2015: 16
2016: 3
2017: 6
2018: 5
2019: 4
2020: 1
2021: 0
2022: 0
2023: 0
2024: 1
Authors from the middle period: I-A-M (2015); Scorch215 (2015); Lunasservant1985 (2015); AuNaturale (2015); TheDriderPony (2015); Mitch H (2015); No Pony (2015); Twisted Brew (2015); Phantom-Dragon (2015); The-Black-Knight (2015); Penalt (2015); BATZ (2015); The Sleepless Beholder (2015); Perfectly Insane (2015); Mocha Star (2015); Winter Rosario (2015); Foal Star (2016); Honeydrops (2016); RuinQueenofOblivion (2016); Silent Whisper (2017); Arceaion (2017); Artist (2017); NinjaMare (2017); Crimson Prose (2017); Not Enough Coffee (2017); Universal Librarian (2018); PlagueRat (2018); Third Wheel (2018); ThePinkedWonder (2018); The Blue EM2 (2018); cjouni0903 (2019); extremeenigma02 (2019);AtomicClop (2019); L-N (2019)
Authors from the late period: LSTS Connor (2020); scrungusbungus (2024)
TOTALS: 895 authors
2011: 154
2012: 379
2013: 154
2014: 90
2015: 52
2016: 22
2017: 17
2018: 9
2019: 8
2020: 8
2021: 0
2022: 1
2023: 0
2024: 1
Yearly breakdowns!
2011:
2000+: 29
1000+: 50
900+: 9
800+: 14
700+: 6
600+: 20
500+: 26
2012:
2000+: 45
1000+: 99
900+: 19
800+: 27
700+: 42
600+: 63
500+: 84
2013:
2000+: 14
1000+: 43
900+: 11
800+: 11
700+: 14
600+: 26
500+: 25
2014:
2000+: 5
1000+: 24
900+: 5
800+: 5
700+: 14
600+: 12
500+: 25
2015:
2000+: 1
1000+: 8
900+: 4
800+: 3
700+: 8
600+: 12
500+: 16
2016:
2000+: 0
1000+: 8
900+: 0
800+: 2
700+: 7
600+: 2
500+: 3
2017:
2000+: 3
1000+: 2
900+: 0
800+: 1
700+: 3
600+: 2
500+: 6
2018:
2000+: 0
1000+: 2
900+: 0
800+: 0
700+: 1
600+: 1
500+: 5
2019:
2000+: 0
1000+: 0
900+: 0
800+: 2
700+: 0
600+: 2
500+: 4
2020:
2000+: 0
1000+: 1
900+: 1
800+: 0
700+: 1
600+: 4
500+: 1
2021:
2000+: 0
1000+: 0
900+: 0
800+: 0
700+: 0
600+: 0
500+: 0
2022:
2000+: 0
1000+: 1
900+: 0
800+: 0
700+: 0
600+: 0
500+: 0
2023:
2000+: 0
1000+: 0
900+: 0
800+: 0
700+: 0
600+: 0
500+: 0
2024:
2000+: 0
1000+: 0
900+: 0
800+: 0
700+: 0
600+: 0
500+: 1
Top 5 Follows Per Year:
2011: Pen Stroke (9698); shortskirtsandexplosions (7059); Wanderer D (5513); knighty (5017); The Descendant (4158)
2012: Kkat (6529); Anonymous Pegasus (5534); The Abyss (4927); BronyWriter (4631); Aegis Shield (4431)
2013: TittySparkles (3818); dirty little secret (3736); Monochromatic (3718); Zamairiac (3441); Kaidan (3346)
2014: Starscribe (3494); Flutterpriest (3412); Pusspuss (2959); kudzuhaiku (2478); naturalbornderpy (2382)
2015: Hiver (2727); Ebonyglow (1884); Damaged (1676); tom117z (1531); Harms Way (1529)
2016: Israel Yabuki (1532); dracedomino (1507); LewdChapter (1442); TheOneWithoutAName (1434); Queen Sanguine Dreams (1371)
2017: Some Leech (5496); An Intricate Disguise (2617); Clopficsinthecomments (2607); Cackling Moron (1521); the7Saviors (1117)
2018: 23 KM To Nerdiness (1636); Lets Do This (1110); SockPuppet (779); X145 (629); Universal Librarian (597)
2019: DanishDash (855); Bobbles (809); Spoonfed Art (624); TCC56 (600); cjouni0903 (536)
2020: Buster Knutt Reborn (1104); KKSlider (977); Vis-A-Viscera (718); Boopy Doopy (694); iAmSiNnEr (681)
2021: Blaze-saber (423); PegPony (341); Quoterific (249); EileenSaysHi (246); UnknownError (245)
2022: RunicTreetops (1209); OverUnderCookened (345); morbiusgreen (302); LiveFreeOrDie (218); Stalin with Da Spoon (208)
2023: Big Imagination E (245); Flygon (229); *; *; *
2024: scrungusbungus (537); *; *; *; *
(* I stopped searching once I was 125 pages in. At that point it was in the low 180s follow count and 3000 users deep.)
THE FOLLOWING EDIT IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY RAMBLING WRITER AND A MASTERY OF PYTHON
So Rambling kindly offered to help things along and slapped together a Python script. This shows both the above list - of top followed users by year - but also sorts it further by doing it by date of their first published story rather than just account creation date. Many of the folks don't move but there's some really interesting ones that do!
2011: shortskirtsandexplosions (7059); Wanderer D (5513); The Descendant (4158); Rated Ponystar (4017); ROBCakeran53 (3946); Cold in Gardez (3882); Hoopy McGee (3836); DawnFade (3741); JasonTheHuman (2998); Crowley (2847)
2012: Pen Stroke (9698; joined 2011); Anonymous Pegasus (5534); BronyWriter (4631); Aegis Shield (4431); Eakin (4089); Chengar Qordath (4084); ObabScribbler (4039); little big pony (3838); RainbowBob (3833); TittySparkles (3818; joined 2013)
2013: Kkat (6529; joined 2012); The Abyss (4927; joined 2012); MadMaxtheBlack (4418; joined 2012); dirty little secret (3735); Zamairiac (3441); Kaidan (3346); DisneyFanatic23 (2974); Flammenwerfer (2872; joined 2012); Holy (2749; joined 2012); Estee (2682)
2014: Monochromatic (3718; joined 2013); Starscribe (3494); Flutterpriest (3413); Somber (2597; joined 2012); kudzuhaiku (2478); naturalbornderpy (2382); Jest (2165; joined 2011); Autum Breeze (1970); David Silver (1924; joined 2013); King of Beggars (1828)
2015: Pusspuss (2959; joined 2014); Hiver (2727); Carapace (2075; joined 2013); Damaged (1676); anonpencil (1668; joined 2014); tom117z (1531); Harms Way (1529); Codex Ex Equus (1455); LewdChapter (1442; joined 2016); TheLostNarrator (1317; joined 2013)
2016: dracedomino (1506); Amber Spark (1458; joined 2015); TheOneWithoutAName (1434); Queen Sanguine Dreams (1371); MassDriver (1016); XenoPony (997; joined 2015); Sporktacles (968; joined 2013); Orthoros (796; joined 2012); JackRipper (788; joined 2015); The Bricklayer (787)
2017: Some Leech (5496); An Intricate Disguise (2617); Clopficsinthecomments (2607); Israel Yabuki (1532; joined 2016); Cackling Moron (1521); the7Saviors (1117); Irrespective (1026; joined 2016); LucidDreamer (779); 2Merr (701; joined 2016); Silent Whisper (593)
2018: 23 KM To Nerdiness (1636); Lets Do This (1111); CrimsonWolf360 (1021; joined 2014); DHeroRedMagma (804; joined 2015); Dr Sharaz Jek (804; joined 2017); SockPuppet (779); CapNTilfy (773; joined 2015); JimmyHook19 (738; joined 2016); tkepner (707; joined 2017); CommanderApplejack (632; joined 2017)
2019: Uh-hmmm (1175; joined 2016); Twilight is the BEST (985; joined 2015); DanishDash (855); Horse Girls Are Watching (760; joined 2017); SpoonfedArt (624); TCC56 (600); PlagueRat (574; joined 2018); Third Wheel (545; joined 2018); ThePinkedWonder (528; joined 2018); AtomicClop (516)
2020: Buster Knutt MkII (1104); KKSlider (977); Bobbles (809; joined 2019); Vis-a-Viscera (718); iAmSiNnEr (681); Burt (610); LSTS Connor (557); NinjaMare (545; joined 2017); underrated Drake (495; joined 2019); KingdaKa (443)
2021: Blaze-saber (423); Adobepone (388); TheScottishbroneyforlife (377; joined 2020); PegPony (341); Erynaster (287; joined 2020); Incandesca (267; joined 2020); Quoterific (249); EileenSaysHi (246); JBukharin (240; joined 2018); JimmySlimmy (237; joined 2020)
2022: Ebonyglow (1884; joined 2015); RunicTreetops (1209); OverUnderCookened (345); morbiusgreen (302); HK-FortySeven (292; joined 2020); UnknownError (245; joined 2021); LiveFreeOrDie (218); Stalin with Da Spoon (208); Nugget27 (193); Birdybirdbird (183)
2023: Big Imagination E (245); RoshiRat (244; joined 2017); FIygon (229); Pillowfight (132; joined 2021); Maonyman (118); Aiwhisper (109); dragonfan101 (103); WojakWriter (100; joined 2021); Sahelanthropus (87); Paul0504 (81; joined 2022)
2024: scrungusbungus (542); Phoenixcolt45 (72; joined 2017); DapperLilArts (58); BlueDragon64 (58; joined 2021); Cyrus Colter (43; joined 2012); samble (36; joined 2023); Glimbursts (36); Serene Wish (35); Cynical Page (35); BBunny (31; joined 2023)
Of course a lot of followers of the earlier accounts could also be completely inactive -- a follower who has left the fandom doesn't count as much towards readership as one who is active.
Good on you for taking the time to make this. I cannot imagine how much time and dedication this took. Myself, I have never liked looking at the numbers. I just more so enjoy interacting with this fandom however I could.
5779696
Shakes theorized on that last go-round, yeah. It's something that can't really be sorted for, but it's indeed a valid concern. A reader ten years ago isn't as valuable as a reader now.
I feel like I have never appreciated a blog opening as much as i have the opening of this blog. :)
sentences in the English language
5779718
I know, right?
(But it's also true - I wrestled for a bit with how to handle it, since Buster's two account situation is pretty unique and there's a ton of overlap. Eventually I just threw up my hands and ran with it since I didn't bother to separate out other alt pairs like SSE/Imploding Colon or SockPuppet/AtomicClop.)
Descy is up to 4k+ even though he's been inactive so long? That's awesome.
5779721
+ Blue Harvest + Just Essay + ...
Then as now, I love this sort of stuff. For the statistics, of course, not for procrastinating from writing.
Some of the outliers are freaky. 2021-2024 didn't produce a single fic in any of the checked ranges, except for the two massive outliers of Ebonyglow (1800+ fics for someone who didn't publish until 2022, what the hell) and scrungusbungus. Sadly, both just writing clop, but that's the world we live in.
Still, whenever you get around to doing more statistical analysis, I'll be as interested as you once again!
And Rambling Writer chiming in with extra stuff after the fact is just the cherry on top (seeing a user like LostNarrator in her proper place of 2015 rather than 2013 is rather telling*). Too much to hope for my dream of a Python script that'll look at a user's followers and return how many of them were online in the last x period of time (a day, a week, a month etc.). Now that would be the real indicator for anyone how much of their follower count is "active" or "dead"!
* While I took two years after joining to publish my first fic, considering even 10th in that year still has nearly 450 fics, don't think I'm gonna gold out hope for cracking this list myself any time soon!
5779751
Too much to hope for, you say? Try this. Enter the ID of the user you want to analyze on the right side of the screen and give it a shot. It shouldn't take more than a minute to run; stress-testing it with Pen Stroke at nearly 10k followers had it run in just under 40 seconds. If it hangs, either reload or hit the Play button in the upper toolbar.
5779821
This is pretty much exactly what I'd wanted! I see the script is 100 lines of code too, not exactly something churned out in a couple of minutes, so I'm very flattered (and a little embarrassed) that you did that on a whim just because I wished offhand for it.
Short of it also allowing the user to determine what date range they want to check via input of days/weeks/months/years, and a personal idle curiosity of when all Fimfic users were last online in general by the same categories above (likely only counting users with at least 1 follower, to omit all the bot accounts, even if that would also cull some real users), this is perfect!
You won't mind if I discuss and analyse some results of this in a blog of mine, I hope? You'll get mucho thanks, of course, my friend.
5779851
I was in a coding mood and figured, "What the hay?" Chunks of it were swiped from other projects of mine, so it wasn't as hard as it looks.
I assume you mean an input where the user puts in a number for each value and the code looks at the past X days, etc.? I can add that. (Feel free to contact me over PM if you want to discuss more without cluttering the blog's comments.)
The code does have some limitations, and given the size of the userbase, this isn't something that I can stick online like the previous code. I could try personally running it on my computer and sharing the results with you, though.
Of course I don't mind! Go nuts.