Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

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Just because you have followers doesn't mean you have fans.

I follow people that post e.g. cat pictures, but I wouldn't buy their merch. I don't even know who these people are, really; their posts are a commodity to me. They're "oh, more cat pictures", not "a new post from [X]!" I found them through the app's recommendations, hit follow, and then never looked into them further. Why would I want to buy anything from them?

The edges connecting vertices on social networks have weights, despite the social networks themselves not modelling this. Some people, despite being very "connected" in theory, have a very low aggregate weight of connection; all their connections are barely there.

It's like having a million acquaintances and no friends.

(And, of course, some percentage of the vertices you're connected to might be deactivated/purchased/bots/etc. But even when that's not true, you still won't make sales on your "personal brand" to mere acquaintances.)

This is missing the point entirely.

The reason she couldn't sell T-Shirts is because she didn't build a real audience around her. She likely used bots to boost her followers and raise the status of her profile without actually building engagement.

People who have built real audiences around themselves using social media are superstars. Casey Neistat and MKBHD can sell tens of thousands of T-Shirts if they wanted to.

The only point this makes is that Social Media is a tool. It can be used well or it can be used poorly.

> She likely used bots to boost her followers and raise the status of her profile without actually building engagement.

This is missing the point entirely. Comments on the OP notice that she had good engagement in her posts and good evidence that the followers were real.

The bet seems to be that the product planning and marketing were real weak.

I saw the point you made in your top-level sibling subthread and acknowledged it in a parenthetical to my post. I was trying to talk about a different situation, which doesn't necessarily apply to this specific case, but rather is interesting to consider in general as a response to the question "why couldn't someone with a million followers on Instagram monetize those followers?"

Let me reiterate: there are people with a million social-media subscribers of "real audience", who still could not sell a single T-shirt. https://chubbycattumbling.tumblr.com/ and whatever the equivalents of such blogs are on Instagram likely have a million+ subscribers—real people—but also have built no "personal brand", and therefore would generate no interest in products marketed under said personal brand.

Casey Neistat and MKBHD aren't superstars because they have millions of followers. They're superstars because they've been marketing their personal brands from the beginning, and so every (real) follower they've gained is also a fan. But this does not apply in every situation.

(It especially doesn't apply to corporate social-media outreach, something of interest to the HN crowd: just posting cool stuff your startup made might attract a "real audience" of people who want that stuff... but unless you're branding that stuff as yours when you do that, you won't be able to later convert that audience at all. That should be obvious to someone who's job is "social-media brand manager"—but it's not obvious to someone who wants to get rich selling merch to Insta followers.)

Ah, got it. I think we're actually on the same page then!

IG is full of bots that follow you randomly. You dont need to be doing it on purpose to be swamped by them. Twitter isnt the only platform with a bot problem.

I don't even know who these people are, really; their posts are a commodity to me.

The T-Shirts are created on demand. The stock is virtual, and effectively endless, with the selection as expansive as the digital designs uploaded. However, the posts are even more of a commodity. All media is becoming an ephemeral commodity. This can even extends to apps and games. Given the recent history of media, it seems inevitable.

Exactly this.

I create free content(its intellectual), I hope your type appreciates my labor.

Although, I do agree, cute pictures are easy to produce.

Can you explain what you mean by intellectual free content? That describes basically every random thing on the internet.

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