Celebs with impressive numbers of followers on Instagram may not be as popular as they think.
The social media site recently told all users, “Your number of followers has changed. We just completed a fix to remove spammy accounts.”
That’s bad news for stars who either attract large numbers of spam accounts or in some cases pad their followers by adding fake ones.
Many stars’ accounts are handled by a social media team, explains Michael Heller, CEO of Talent Resources. “It’s very inexpensive, so that’s why many social media teams [buy followers].” Websites can charge just $30 for 2,500.
Whether the faux followers are paid for or not, the result of Instagram’s fake-account purge has seen celebs’ numbers plummet.
On Thursday, we noticed about 1.3 million of Kim Kardashian’s vanished. Rihanna’s decreased by about 1.2 million. Katy Perry’s went down 300,000. Even Oprah lost 100,000.
“It’s bad for a celeb for many reasons,” Heller said. “It’s embarrassing,” plus “they also could lose lots of money.”
Brands pay up to $100,000 for posts and negotiate fees based on followers. Bravo’s Andy Cohen tweeted, “I lost 20k followers in the #InstagramPurge . . . Twitter, next?”