{"id":1603,"date":"2019-07-18T12:13:48","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T06:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/?p=1603"},"modified":"2019-07-18T12:13:48","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T06:43:48","slug":"the-fake-followers-epidemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/2019\/07\/18\/the-fake-followers-epidemic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fake Followers epidemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_in\/article\/wjvme5\/indian-instagram-influencers-have-16-million-fake-followers\">Shamani Joshi at Vice India<\/a>, &#8220;A study finds that Indian content creators have the third-highest number of bought followers, likes and boosted engagement in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I remember an interaction with a client around 2009 and this was the early days of Twitter in India. It goes like this:<\/p>\n<p>Me: Sir, here are the set of bloggers who have been blogging since 2005 and are really good at what they do.<\/p>\n<p>Client: How many twitter followers do they have?<\/p>\n<p>Only if I had known that this client was setting precedent to what is going to happen in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Ever wondered what made the influencers buy followers and boost engagement?<\/p>\n<p>I remember a conversation with one of a top beauty blogger who was new to Instagram then feeling the heat from newbie Instagram stars. The brands were flocking to this newbie star &amp; ignoring this top beauty blogger. What would this blogger do? She would have been forced to buy followers to compete &amp; make it a level playing field.<\/p>\n<p>There is a list which floats around all the PR agencies that contain the &#8216;top&#8217; influencers from each category. Sometimes brands also stumble upon this list and then dictate an agency that they want to work with only these influencers.<\/p>\n<p>What about the content? What about the readers? When will the focus come on these two important aspects?<\/p>\n<p>I hope this cleanup activity will finally bring some sanity to the influencer landscape in India and bring about an order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Shamani Joshi at Vice India, &#8220;A study finds that Indian content creators have the third-highest number of bought followers, likes and boosted engagement in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-influencer-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harishkrishnan.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}