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Sparkle (2)
Remember back when it was newsworthy that Ashton Kutcher beat out CNN to first hit one million followers on Twitter? That was exciting in the moment, but once that flag was firmly planted in the ground, it became a race to see who could gain 10 million followers (Lady Gaga). Or a race to see who could go from zero to one million the fastest (Charlie Sheen in two days). And I'm sure we'll one day be reading a news story about the first person to reach one billion followers.
Billion is the new million.
This idea has been on my mind because Google+ just hit 90 million users, and back in December, Britney Spears was the first person to hit one million followers on the site. Cnet's bitter grapes assessment of her win is that "it seems likely that Spears only made it to the million-follower mountaintop first because folks like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber aren't on Google's social network yet." After all, Lady Gaga has over 18 million followers on Twitter. Surely she could snag more than a million on Google+.
Forget discussions on what these numbers mean -- we all know that people subscribe to blogs, subscribe to Twitter feeds, like things on Facebook and then tune out any message coming towards them (truly, how many of Lady Gaga's followers actually read every single one of her tweets and how many catch one here and there?). The numbers are impressive and they're fairly meaningless because we can't measure how many people the words reach and influence.
What I am more curious about is the shifting number goal.
When I first started blogging, I thought 100 readers for a post sounded pretty damn good. I certainly didn't have 100 people in my day-to-day world that I communicated my point-of-view with on a regular basis at the same time. One cousin may know my thoughts about X and a friend may know my thoughts about Y, but we all traded pieces of information in these small, personal amounts.
What writer didn't dream of being an opinion columnist for a major newspaper and reaching a multitude of people at the same time? And blogs were just opinion columns, with less editing.
So 100 sounded good. And then I wanted 200. Then I heard about people who had 1000 readers and that felt like a goal to hit. Then 3000. I'm aware that 3000 is an odd choice, but it felt like a threshold number to me at one point. When I first started blogging, there weren't a ton of non-bloggers reading blogs, and getting 3000 people to read a post felt like you had major reach, at least by blogging standards. But would you say that 3000 daily visitors is a lot of people now? It all depends on your point-of-view: some would do anything to get that sort of traffic and others would freak out if their hits dropped that low; but I think we all can agree that 3000 visitors isn't newsworthy. Not when Perez Hilton gets about 3000 visitors in the time it takes him to sneeze.*
I'm not speaking about personal goals because we all know that we set a new one when we reach the first one. I'm talking about collectively, as a society, what numbers impress us. What numbers mean something. And yes, I think we have a different standard for celebrities or blog sites with major funding vs. everyday people and personal blogs. And in reality, I'm not even all that interested anymore in what celebrities or major sites can achieve because their success is driven by elements outside of the social media world.
I'm talking about what numbers impress you when it comes to a regular person starting a blog and gaining readers, or setting up a Twitter account and gaining their first followers.
What is the threshold where once they step over that numerical line, you start to think of them as a well-known or popular blogger? What is the number of Twitter followers a regular person could have that would make you say holy shit?
* I don't know Perez Hilton's traffic stats nor do I know how long it takes him to sneeze -- if he's a one and done, or one of those staccato sneezers -- but I think I'm making a semi-safe
