Some of the biggest names in the entertainment biz lost their figure on Friday — their Instagram follower figure, that is.
But it’s not just Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Bruno Mars that suffered from the photo-sharing platform’s purge of spam bots, local celebrities also lost a big chunk of their followers following a statement from the Facebook company:
“We’re in the process of fixing an issue that incorrectly includes inactive or fake accounts in follower/following lists. We want to maintain the best possible experience on Instagram, so we do our best to remove spam, fake accounts and other people and posts that don’t follow our Community Guidelines. As we remove these accounts, some people may notice a decrease in their follower/following counts.”
Photo: Dawn Yang, who owns the Lexi Lyla blogshop, lost 21,000 followers on Friday; InstagramIn its Dec. 20 issue, local tabloid The New Paper revealed the difference in the follower figure of several Instagram celebs based in Singapore, before and after the exercise now widely referred to as the “Instagram Rapture”:
Crystal Phuong: Dropped 8,100 to 4,900
Dawn Yang: Dropped 21,000 to 59,000
Ian Fang: Dropped 22,000 to 123,000
Melody Yap: Dropped 2,000 to 44,200
Nicole Chen: Dropped 5,700 to 7,300
Rachel Kum: Dropped 15,000 to 12,000
Xiaxue: Dropped 30,000 to 544,000
Yan Kay Kay: Dropped 3,000 to 79,000
Some, like Xiaxue (real name: Wendy Cheng), are not bothered by the change — in fact, they welcome it.
According to Xiaxue, the purge allows those who pay bloggers and ‘influencers’ to promote their products on Instagram, to pick out the ones with extensive reach from those without.
Photo: Xiaxue, who’s been blogging since 2003, is happy ‘fake celebs’ are being exposed; Instagram“Why should they be earning clients’ money? They deserve to be exposed for their inflated numbers,” she told TNP.
And it seems the celebs she’s referring to — the ones with ‘fake numbers’ — are going back to the good ol’ ‘like buying’ strategy to make up for the loss of followers, and potential loss of business.
On Friday morning, a marketing executive, who’d been taking screenshots of the Instagram Rapture activity, wrote on Facebook, “Dear PR people, your “famous” instagrammers are busy buying more followers. Some from 50k drop until 1.4k. Another from 8k dropped till 1.2, but now leaping by the thousands.
TNP also noted in its report that Mediacorp artist Ian Fang had managed to regain at least 7,000 followers by Friday evening, while Miss Singapore Universe Rachel Kum (top pic), refused to speak to media further on the matter after claiming she wasn’t aware of the activity on her Instagram account.
Another blogger who was pleased with Instagram’s latest move Melody Yap, said, “People who used to claim how almighty their numbers are and how they are oh-so-popular and successful are but jokes now.”
Yet another blogger Yan Kay Kay, also a model and an internet TV star, “I would be super embarrassed right now if my numbers dropped drastically because then everyone would know that I bought them.”
Photo: Yan Kay Kay; Instagram
Yan said she’d considered ‘buying likes’ before to stay competitive, but decided not to, for the luxury of “sleep(ing) well at night with a clear conscience”.
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