Instagram Bug: Many Lose Millions of Followers Due to “Instagram Purge”

It seems as though Instagram has purged millions of fake and inactive accounts, as many users experienced a sharp decrease in their follower base. Popular accounts and active users expressed their concerns for the random social media event all over the world. But what seemed to be an Instagram purge turned out to be something completely different. It is now being described as a “bug” by multiple social media experts, and is currently being dealt with as an internal issue.

Instagram’s tweet read: “We’re aware of an issue that is causing a change in account follower numbers for some people right now. We’re working to resolve this as quickly as possible.”

Instagram made a statement on Twitter regarding the issue through their official account, “We’re expecting to have this issue resolved by 9 a.m. PST tomorrow…” Interestingly, Instagram as a company was also impacted negatively by this technical malfunction, as they too lost millions of supporters.

The Facebook-owned platform is now informing its users directly about this bug through an in-app notification. It further states that the issue is a bug in the software and not related to the overall application performance.

However, this is not the first time Instagram has encountered a “glitch” in their program. During November of last year, the social media platform announced that it would be deleting accounts that seem to be from a third-party app used to synthetically grow an audience base.

“Recently, we’ve seen accounts use third-party apps to artificially grow their audience. Starting today, we will begin removing inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity.

We’re taking a number of steps to limit this kind of unwelcome behavior. Accounts we identify using these services will receive an in-app message alerting them that we have removed the inauthentic likes, follows and comments given by their account to others. We will also ask them to secure their account by changing their password”, as previously stated by Instagram regarding last year’s changes.

Social media consultant Matt Navarra even shared an excel file listing huge Instagram accounts that had massive drops in followers. Katy Perry, for example, lost 900,000 followers; Kylie Jenner also lost 2.5 million followers.

Even sport fashion brand Nike lost a large number of followers, which dropped from 84,600,000 to 83,500,000. One of Buzzfeed’s account, buzzfeedtasty, also lost 700,000 followers. Even social media mogul 9gag dropped from 48,600,000 to 49,800,000 followers.

Celebrity stylist James Charles took his feelings on Twitter when he lost over half a million followers. Singers Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez couldn’t escape from Instagram’s purge either, each losing 3 million and 2 million followers respectively.


While some users expressed their confusion when checking their accounts, the extent of how the bug has affected the platform is still largely unknown. The specifics are not well defined, as the error may have caused different changes on different accounts. 

Fans even expressed their dismay on Twitter as their accounts had massive reductions in their follower base. The disappearances have yet to be fully explained.

when 100s of fan accounts run by real people are being deleted on your platform but drawing giraffes seems more important

— dee (@ayydweeba) January 14, 2019

Nathan Kinsella, founder of Manila based iProfit Social shared his thoughts with Inquirer on Friday. “We work with thousands of IG accounts daily and although most saw a drop initially their follower accounts have all returned to normal within 48 hours. We expect Instagram to continue to police inauthentic behavior and we welcome the removal of such accounts from the platform.”

However, Instagram hasn’t been the only one cleaning up their social platform. Twitter has already started wiping out fake accounts and bots. These changes directly affect political figures, celebrities, and “influencers,” as the reach of their exposure is effected. Because the number of Twitter followers has always been considered a metric of popularity, the follower count can influence various business, political, and social agendas. Because these accounts carry real world implications and power, many argue that the removal of fake accounts is beneficial to the platforms. The Instagram influencers that get paid tens, to hundreds, to thousands of dollars for Instagram content may be doing so through using fraudulent account behavior. The social media platforms recognize that this market manipulation is concerning. The problem solely lies on people buying followers to boost their popularity. Is this type of market manipulation through ingenuine marketing tactics an inevitable side effect of mass social media exposure?

While we all know how important followers are for influencers, especially when cash is on the line, we hope that Instagram and Facebook are able to remedy these technical issues and establish a secure means for companies to promote their product or service.

source: usa.inquirer.net

Video is paying off big time for Facebook

When Facebook decided to make video a priority on its platform, Mark Zuckerberg saw it as a big step for the company. Based on the most recent quarterly earnings call, it looks like the company is really raking it in, thanks to video.

Apart from increasing engagement from users through video comments, Facebook’s Marketplace has become a popular outlet for  video ads. The company’s average revenue per user has increased 49.1 percent in the US and Canada, reports Tech Crunch.

Zuckerberg had this to say about the effect of video regarding viewer engagement: “What is enabling video to become huge right now is that fundamentally the mobile networks are getting to a point where a large enough number of people around the world can have a good experience watching a video. If you go back a few years and you tried to load a video in News Feed it might have to buffer for 30 seconds before you watched it, which wasn’t a good enough experience for that to be the primary way that people shared. But now you can — it loads instantly. You can take a video and upload it without having to take five minutes to do that.”

Sharper cameras, bigger screen, better video-making tools also supplement increased user engagement. They allow amateur creators to share their work on the mobile platform.

Facebook is currently adding video filters and effects, selfie masks and overlaid graphics (similar to Snapchat), among others, thanks to its acquisition of AR lens startup MSQRD.

Apart from big-brand video ads, Facebook is also bringing in small businesses into the video format. COO Sheryl Sandberg explains that current smartphone technology allows these businesses to shoot their own video and effectively advertise themselves without the need for a costly production crew.

To increase effectivity, Facebook is also doing some deep research into AI to try to figure out what is in the content that people and advertisers post, then how to get said content to the target audience.

“When we think about video ads and what platform they run on, we really believe that over time the dollars will shift with eyeballs and our goal is to be the best dollar and the best minute people spend measured across channels,” Sanderberg says.

Facebook has done well to ride the changing times and has managed to stay above its competitors. With its kind of planning and foresight, it would appear that the status quo won’t be shifting any time soon.  Alfred Bayle

source: technology.inquirer.net

‘YouTubers’ outshining old-school television

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — A media revolution is taking place, and most people over 35 years of age aren’t tuned in.

Millennials and their successors are shunning old-school television in favor of watching what they want whenever they wish on Google-owned YouTube or other video platforms like Dailymotion or Facebook.

“Young people don’t really watch TV any more; they watch online videos that are shorter and more talent-driven,” says Fabienne Fourquet, a former executive at A&E Television and France’s Canal+ who now heads the multichannel network 2btube.

“They don’t want to be Hollywood stars when they grow up, they want to be YouTubers. There is this whole other world.”

The new multichannel networks, or MCNs, are talent agents of sorts for creators of videos shared at online venues.

They help creators, often referred to as YouTubers, with video production and promotion along with finding partners or sponsors in return for a percentage of revenue.

Fourquet said popular subjects include music, comedy, sports, video games, fashion and beauty.

She noted that three-quarters of her viewers were younger than 34 years of age, and half were under 25.

“There are very few of us old people,” Fourquet quipped.

– World tunes in -Self-described YouTuber Caroline Artiss has been a chef for 20 years, but opted out of restaurants and went to work for herself in catering in 2008.

Then, a friend showed her how simple it was to make videos for YouTube.

“It was just me and a tripod in my kitchen,” Artiss told AFP.

“Then people starting tuning in from all over the world.”

She recounted cooking her way across the United States for a multi-episode show after catching eyes at BBC America and a television network in Malaysia.

Artiss said she approaches her cooking videos from the perspective of a single mom — short on money and time but needing to feed a family.

She was signed on by a video network that describes itself as being tailored for a mobile generation and focused on “tastemakers” sharing passion for food and travel.

“It still blows my mind,” Artiss said.

“I am coming from a single mom, living in London, struggling to pay my bills to having an opportunity to start my own TV channel in a way.”

Artiss teamed with other chefs to open Gorgeous Kitchen restaurant at London Heathrow airport.

She has a cookbook due out later this year and works with Youth Policy Institute to raise money to get fresh produce to low-income families.

Naturally, she did a video. It can be seen online at app.mobilecause.com/vf/YPIFRESH.

– Television tomfoolery -An annual Vidcon gathering in Southern California has become a hot venue for YouTubers to connect with business opportunities and ecstatic fans.

Some 25,000 people were reported to have attended this year’s Vidcon, which took place in June.

“With the onset of digital video platforms and the fact that everyone has a smartphone in their pockets, we have democratized being a creator,” said Paladin co-founder James Creech, whose California company specializes in technology for finding budding stars in a vast universe where anyone can post content online.

“A 17-year-old in his or her own bedroom can compete with the likes of CBS and build an audience that would rival a major media company.”

Keys to hit online videos include being creative and regularly posting content, according to Creech.

Amateurs can outshine polished professional content with authentic connections that make viewers think of them as friends, he said.

“Regular TV is about cartoons and YouTube is about real people and the games I like,” 11-year-old California boy and online video fan Henry Crawford told AFP.

“Television is tomfoolery.”

Paladin indexes millions of channels, providing analytics that can narrow down videos by popularity, topic, language and more.

The YouTube channel with the most subscribers is that of Swedish video maker and comedian PewDiePie, who provides captivating commentary while playing video games.

Hot online video trends include “unboxing,” in which people film themselves or others opening packages with unknown contents.

A popular YouTube channel called Hydraulic Press features videos of things being crushed by just that piece of equipment.

Amazon-owned Twitch on Friday announced that it is experimenting with a new “Social Eating” category in which people streaming broadcasts on the service socialize with viewers over meals.

Traditional media companies would be wise to be worried by the trend, according to Creech.

“It’s a huge disruption,” Creech said. “We are in the midst of a revolution in media and it is very exciting.”

source: technology.inquirer.net

YouTube announces shutdown in April Fool’s prank

WASHINGTON – In an elaborate April Fool’s prank, YouTube announced Sunday it was going dark for a decade, and that the site was merely an eight-year contest to find the best video.

“It’s finally time to pick the winner,” YouTube representatives announced in a 3:32 minute video posted on its homepage.


The message was simple: the world’s most popular video-sharing website would close at the end of the day to review all the video submissions it has received over the years, and would announce the best one in 2023.

“We are so close to the end. Tonight at midnight, youtube.com will no longer be accepting entries. After eight amazing years, it is finally time to review everything that has been uploaded to our site and begin the process of selecting a winner,” said Tim Liston, named as “competition director.”

YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar said that “we started YouTube in 2005 as a contest with a simple goal: to find the best video in the world.”

Users have uploaded more than 70 hours every minute to the site, YouTube estimated.

“I encourage everybody to watch as many videos as possible before YouTube deletes everything tonight,” said Antoine Dodson, who became an Internet sensation when a musical version of his 2010 TV interview about a house intrusion was posted on YouTube.
“Distinguished” film critics, YouTube celebrities and some of the site’s “most prolific” commentators are on the judges’ panel, according to Liston.

The Google-owned online video sharing venue said less than two weeks ago that more than a billion people now use YouTube each month, with viewing on smartphones helping drive growth.

The YouTube team noted that nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits the website, which has grown into a global hit since its launch.

Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion and has yet to disclose whether the service has turned a profit.

YouTube has gradually added professional content, such as full-length television shows and movies to its vast trove of amateur video offerings in a bid to attract advertisers.

source: technology.inquirer.net