Personalities from the world of sports and music amass the largest number of followers on Instagram, one of the most popular social platforms in the world, with over 1.2 billion monthly active users.
THE PROGRAM AND THE SPEAKERS
It is curious that the official account of the platform itself is the most followed. With around 6,900 posts shared, it has around 421 million followers. The second place is occupied by Cristiano Ronaldo, who has 340 million followers. The Portuguese footballer is the most popular celebrity on this social network, and he is also the one who earns the most per sponsored post: on average 1.6 million dollars according to Hopper HQ, an editing and scheduling tool for social posts.
Top influencers on TikTok: twins, comedians and creatives in the shadow of Khabi
by Vincenzo Cosenza
But he is not alone. Ariana Grande, first among women, pockets 1.5 million for each sponsored post; his account is the fifth most followed worldwide and in May of this year, with the photos of his wedding, he obtained more than 26.7 million likes.
In short, it would seem that having many followers is synonymous with success, and important and safe earnings. In this regard, the Italian Khaby Lame, who recently became the most followed character in Europe and the second in the world on TikTok, had an international media echo. She currently has more than 110 million followers on TikTok, with 10.6 million new followers in the last month, over 42 million on Instagram, where she surpassed Chiara Ferragni, but only 280 thousand on Facebook.
On TikTok, where he built his worldwide fame, on average each post by Khaby Lame generates 5.8 million likes, almost 75 thousand comments and more than 26 thousand shares. Still on average, each of his posts gets 49.6 million views. One of his posts can reach almost 145 million views, as in the case of a video from mid-August, which also got 12.4 million likes on Instagram. Huge numbers that have brought him to the fore also of the lights of the recent Venice Film Festival. But what does it actually mean to have more than 100 million followers? What are the benefits of such great celebrities?
Khaby Lame, in a recent interview, said: “My parents are not working at the moment, my dad has been on layoffs since Covid began. I’m trying to do what I can but with TikTok you don’t get rich ”. And in fact, to try to monetize his fame, Lame has opened Khaby Shop, the first ecommerce of the famous influencer. In his online store, among t-shirts, battery chargers for smartphones, shorts, and even a watermelon cutter (currently sold out), the young Piedmontese tries to make the most of his notoriety and the large following he enjoys.
social network
Khaby Lame and the queens of TikTok
by Emanuele Capone
It is the clearest possible demonstration of the difference between notoriety and influence, two concepts too often confused with each other.
According to research by IAB Europe and TikTok for Business, “creator marketing” reached new highs in Europe last year with an investment exceeding € 1.3 billion. And now all social platforms are chasing “creators”.
In short, perhaps the hype towards influencers begins to deflate and now it seems the time for creators, to whom all the main social platforms are dedicating attention and budget.
This inevitably places the emphasis on competence and invites us to delve into how competence is redefined in the modern era. “Science is believing in the ignorance of experts,” Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman once said. Right now we are witnessing a golden age of competence or a crisis of competence, depending on who you ask. It is undeniable that technology has democratized access to high-quality information, data and tools for research, creation and distribution. But how do we separate the signals from the noise, the skills we need and the skills we don’t have?
The wisdom of the crowds is giving way to the “wisdom of the communities”. In a world of increasing complexity, no one can make sense of all the signals and all the noise from a single static observation point. A networked group is needed to adapt to this new world.
The domains of knowledge historically ruled by prominent “experts” are shaken when the inadequacy of individuals to this new complexity is revealed. The wisdom of crowds – the idea that groups of people who value the same possibilities but from different points of view might have superior insights than “experts” – offered an alternative approach. This approach checks the defects of a single interpreter by sampling disparate perspectives and coordinating them in a median point of view. Be it stock exchanges or betting, the wisdom of crowds has been consistently validated, and even more so in the days of the internet.
In this sense, to answer the question of what it means to have 100 million followers, or more, the focus must be shifted from quantity to quality. From the number of followers and the potential reach they generate to the ability to engage, and therefore ultimately influence, that celebrities, influencers and creators are and will be able to express.
.