This can be a cool German tank problem type deal where you have a bunch of random numbered accounts and don't know what the top numbered account is and have to estimate how many total accounts there are assuming the accounts are numbered 1 to N.
Not related but I just wanted to say I love your site. I have seen previous things you have worked on from Reddit, I am always pleasantly surprised it is the same creator/s
I think a better (but harder to obtain) metric would be activity. Given that people use their Instagram account, the user account isn't too relevant since you don't really need to sign up.
I'm with you on that! I don't have space to cram more stuff in my life, my day or my head. Quite the opposite in fact, the more I toss overboard the better things get.
Anyone have a view of the percentage of accounts that are likely to be fakes/bots? Is this even a thing? Or is there some sort of verification on sign-up?
Threads accounts are linked to Instagram accounts, so the same verification standards should apply. If there's one underrated thing Meta will do better than Twitter here, it's cut down on spam / bots used for astroturfing and algo manipulation.
1/3 of the accounts following me on instagram are bots… I get spam messages that try to get me to buy nudes every couple of months. I don’t think they’re that much better.
I have roughly similar numbers of followers and IG is a trash fire compared to Twitter and even less chance for a DM to be read.
That being said the biggest argument against Twitter is that there is no more Twitter. It's now legally X corp, aka Musk's wechat. Take that for what you will.
Whoah. I think the opposite. IG seems to me chock full of bots compared to Twitter, because you can't turn off the recommended feed in your face. I'm sure this mandatory recommendations thing will happen with Threads as soon as they feel like exploiting userbase.
No screen scraping involved actually - the data collection process is mostly manual. Can do a longer write-up on the methodology later tonight if there's interest.
It's pretty straightforward, because Instagram displays users' account number on their IG profile.
If someone has an account number of 50,000, it seems to mean that they were the 50,000th person to join.*
I have an Instagram account with a lot of followers, so I've hade a steady stream of notifications coming in about new users joining.
By viewing the profiles of people who just joined the platform, I can see where they were in line and get a general idea of how many users have signed up.
I started checking this intermittently and recording the estimates.
*I don't think this is explicitly stated, but it seems to be true based off of Zuckerberg's posts about user milestones.
It's pretty straightforward, because Instagram displays users' account number on their IG profile.
If someone has an account number of 50,000, it seems to mean that they were the 50,000th person to join.*
I have an Instagram account with a lot of followers, so I've hade a steady stream of notifications coming in about new users joining.
By viewing the profiles of people who just joined the platform, I can see where they were in line and get a general idea of how many users have signed up.
I started checking this intermittently and recording the estimates.
*I don't think this is explicitly stated, but it seems to be true based off of Zuckerberg's posts about user milestones.
