If you’re totally pumped about all the Instagram followers you’ve gained through your clever and probably excessive use of hashtags, you might want to check those numbers again. On Wednesday night, Instagram took the axe to its spammiest accounts, reducing its user base by the millions.
Though, if you’re that concerned with the number of people who choose to look at your carefully curated life, you probably already know. The event has been dubbed the “Instagram Rapture” by those who were truly devastated by the loss of fake friends. And we’re not just talking high school-aged kids with nothing better to do. Rapper Ma$e lost 1.5 million followers in the purge, which led to accusations of him buying fake followers . Following those accusations, he went all out and just deleted his account. Yeah man, forget those 272,000+ real followers.
Other accounts suffered pretty considerable as well. Instagram’s own account lost 18 million followers. Singer Akon lost 56 percent of his Instagram audience and rapper Tyga dropped from 5.5 million to 2.2 million followers.
But the loss of followers is actually a pretty big deal for brands. The New York Times notes that they can actually score pretty lucrative promotion deals with companies simply based on the number of followers they have. Not that Justin Bieber is ever at a loss for deals, but seeing a 15 percent reduction in followers was probably a bit eye-opening to brands who are trying to reach real people with real spending power.
In Instagram’s defense, they noted that these accounts have been deactivated for quite some time after they were marked as spam, or for violating their terms of service. They simply did the cleaning process on Wednesday night to take care of the wasted space. They noted that going forward, these purges will be common and happen far more frequently. The bonus of this is definitely geared toward business, as it should be. They’re now ensuring that the number of followers you boast actually means something and will likely score even better promotional deals.
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