The Internet is still recovering from this week’s Instagram purge, which deleted millions of spam accounts. Celebrities, bloggers and the Internet famous all watched as their follower counts fell, some experienced huge losses due to the fact that a portion were bought. But whether they purchased their followers or were simply spam account magnets, several celebrities suffered significant losses which could affect their wallets. Brands link with influencers to promote their products on social media and if they don’t have the reach they initially thought, it could force brands to reconsider whom they work with.
Celebrities hit hard by the purge: Kim Kardashian lost 1.3 million followers, Justin Bieber went down 3 million, Rihanna lost 1.2 million, Selena Gomez is out 1 million, Ariana Grande 1.5 million, Akon lost 56% of his followers and Ma$e went down a million and deleted his account.
As for the blogger set, Fashionista reports that some influencers suffered major losses (Bryanboy noted he was down 200,000 followers and Aimee Song went from 1.9 to 1.8 million), but Fohr Card, an agency that sets up brands with top bloggers, said that they didn’t find anyone who had been running game with a significant amount of bought followers.
Still, reverberations are being felt by lots of people. Instagram’s own account lost 18 million of its followers, but they don’t seem too upset about it. “After receiving feedback from members in the Instagram community, we recently fixed an issue that incorrectly included inactive accounts in follower/following lists,” the social media network said in a statement. “We believe this will provide a more authentic experience and genuinely reflect people who are actually engaging with each other’s content.”
