Followers vs. Account Age: A pointless data review · 7:59pm Jul 15th, 2021
So back at the start of March when the Friendship is Optimal contest launched, I ended up in a bit of a debate with GaPJaxie on it. Specifically, on the prize for underappreciated writers. The criteria for that one had been 'a writer under 500 followers' - I liked the idea of such a prize but objected that 500 follows was a poor choice for what counted as 'underappreciated'. It was less a popularity check and more an account age check, as the days of dropping one story and pulling in a hundred follows is long, long past.
But I didn't really have any data and it wasn't my contest (and so obviously not my call), so there was a brief debate and things moved on.
Well, I'm having a decompress day and I'm bored and decided to get the data. Because yes, it was an inconsequential two minute debate four months ago but inquiring minds want to know.
So I collected the following data by using the site's user search function. I'll give two asterisks for that:
First, there is the possibility that I missed an author somewhere in the mix here. The only way to find this information is to sort by number of followers and then manually click through to user pages to record origin dates, so it's not impossible I mentally filled in a 3 for an 8 along the line somewhere.
Second is that one user who is in the target range is excluded, mostly because I have no idea how to classify Buster Knutt (MkII) as it's the recreation of a deleted account almost entirely reposting deleted stories. So that's a big ???.
To break down the data, there are currently 298 users with 1000+ followers on the site; 357 with 900+; 422 with 800+; 512 with 700+; 639 with 600+; 815 with 500+. With 308,977 users in total, that means 0.26% of all users hit the 500 follower threshold. (Unfortunately I can't find the number with 0 follows total to weed them out - the search function breaks at around the 40 followers mark, 10,000 users in. The number is probably over 200,000, though.)
Looking at that, I scrubbed the list for users registered in the past five years - 2017 or later. That's half the site's lifespan, so it feels like a reasonable target.
There are only five users registered in the last five years who have hit the 1000+ mark: Some Leech, An Intricate Disguise, Clopficsinthecomments, Cackling Moron and TheKMExperience. The most recent of those is KM, who's regged 3 June, 2018 - all the others are various points of 2017.
Expanding things out, the next highest count is the7Saviors (9 Feb, 2017) at 900 exactly. And after that's a huge gap.
There's two users (Lets Do This and Sanguine Dream, 2018 and 2017 respectively) in the 700s; two more (Horse Girls Are Watching and Dr Sharaz Jek, also 2017s) in the 600s. The 500+ bracket has five users (X145, tkepner, DanishDash, SockPuppet and Artist) in it - two 2017s, two 2018s and the only 2019 on this list.
So to break down, the 500+ club has
2017: 10
2018: 4
2019: 1
2020: 0
2021: 0
In total, 15 out of 815. 1.7%.
I think that's good enough data to back up my original point.
Yeah this tracks.
this is what i suspected but never bothered collecting the data for. 500 followers being a cutoff really does seem way too high to be meaningful! i think 100 would have made sense, though. but this is also complicated by how many accounts i've seen with little to no content getting to 100+ followers by simply being followers themselves of 3000+ accounts, and getting the proportion of those that follow back as policy, which does not translate to more eyes on their work. follower count is a very strange metric to measure much by.
Very interesting, thank you!
Oof. Yeah, the audience is only so big after so long.
I could argue that in my particular case, my account was created in 2015, when I first found the site, but only started writing (and gaining followers) in 2020. So, technically my account is really old, but it only became active as a writer last year. In that case, Follower Count and Account Age aren't really related.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you could factor the date of the author's first story was published instead of the account being created.
PS: I do agree that 500 isn't the best number for an "underappreciated" category since even top feature stories don't necessarily bring 500+ followers in one go.
5555508
Funny you should mention that - X145 (one of the 2018s with 500+ followers) is exactly that, following 9133 accounts and having zero stories.
I somewhat agree, but the issue is that nearly every metric you can measure success by has some flaw to it. And I would argue that success metrics are important, particularly for newer users.
5555511
That would have been ideal, yes. Unfortunately as I said, the user search tool is really not great. Gathering this data meant I had to manually click through to each account and record the account create date 815 times. Even if clicking through to the stories to check dates only took an extra ten seconds each time, that would've added more than two hours to the process.
So there's likely a couple discrepancies in the mix there, yes, but you work with what you've got, eh?
5555517
time to learn computer touching so i can search fimfic stats more efficiently. and yes, all metrics are flawed but metrics are important! definitely agree there.
5555517
Oh totally, this already took a great effort to get the results, and it made the point clear
You're a man after my own heart. Also, good work on the math; the system you used makes sense and the math probably checks out. It's definitely true that it's just plain harder to get views, comments, and followers these days then it was in the halcyon days of the beginning and middle of the fandom.
5555581
Actually, that was one of the other things I noticed. While I didn't keep track past the 1000+ follower mark (there were simply too many), almost 2/3rds of the ones over the 1k mark were registered in the 2011-2013 bracket. The number from the 2014-2016 span (the middle days) didn't make up that big of a portion. Somewhat, yes, as they had extra years to get to that level. But the users from the first 2 1/2 years make up the vast majority of the 1k club and I'd say disproportionately so. So even by the time of Season 5, readership was significantly harder to grab.
Something about this makes me sad in a way that's hard to quantify. Like, obviously there's been a drop off of readers over the years, but actually putting it into data... I kinda miss the bustle of those days, you know?
5555508
Hey, I'll have you know I worked hard to get this many followers while producing no content!
5555597
remember a lot of people cycle in and out, so it could very well be an author with a decade-old account and 1000 followers actually has the same amount of active followers as a newer one with 200
5555663
well lah dee dah!
5555664
5555581
This entire conversation pains me. But only insofar as the truth hurts. But it must be said.
5555664
I would be curious to see a ranking of people with the most *active* followers. As in, the most followers that have been on the site in the last (X units of time).
Or even better, I'd like to see a ranking of people with the most followers, who, themselves, have more followers. It could make it more qualitative, and I think this could be a great way to give exposure to new, or under-rated talent.
"Yeah, he might only have 100 followers, but 90 of their followers have over 1000 followers themselves! So they must be doing something right."
My goal is still to reach the thousand club. I should probably actually do some more riding if I'm going to reach that