<story><title>1000 True Fans? Try 100</title><url>https://a16z.com/2020/02/06/100-true-fans/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Proziam</author><text>IIRC the 1k true fans idea was walked back by its original author after they got feedback from industry folks describing how the model was basically impossible to implement in the real world.&lt;p&gt;This holds 100% true to my experience in influencer marketing and esports. Monetizing fans is &lt;i&gt;really hard&lt;/i&gt; on passion alone. You need to create valuable calls to action and continuously produce content in order to maintain their attention. Once you &amp;#x27;lose&amp;#x27; a fan (which only means losing their emotional focus, even temporarily) you often can&amp;#x27;t monetize them &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt; without significant re-activation effort. [0]Demonstrating this, large influencers lose &lt;i&gt;extraordinary&lt;/i&gt; sums of money if they stop producing content for short windows of time.&lt;p&gt;This is why using influencers in marketing requires genuine strategy, and is the likely culprit behind so much &amp;#x27;hate&amp;#x27; for influencer marketing.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dexerto.com&amp;#x2F;entertainment&amp;#x2F;ninja-reveals-shocking-number-of-subscribers-he-lost-by-missing-two-days-of-streaming-100449&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dexerto.com&amp;#x2F;entertainment&amp;#x2F;ninja-reveals-shocking...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aj-4</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think Ninja is a particularly good example because (1) he is operating at a scale where the normal rules don&amp;#x27;t apply (2) his rise was equally fast and volatile (3) twitch requires a constant presence more than other content platforms.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore I read your take, and maybe I&amp;#x27;m wrong, as a 1k &amp;quot;fans&amp;quot; and not 1k &amp;quot;true fans&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;true fans&amp;quot; model is a subset within the larger audience demographic -- they don&amp;#x27;t care if you stop producing for a while, need their short attention spans pandered too, or the like, this is what makes them &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; fans.&lt;p&gt;maybe your advice changed their life, or they really resonate with you for some personal reasons -- and again this would only be a sub-set of a creator&amp;#x27;s total fan base.&lt;p&gt;At least this is my interpretation of the concept.</text></comment>
<story><title>1000 True Fans? Try 100</title><url>https://a16z.com/2020/02/06/100-true-fans/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Proziam</author><text>IIRC the 1k true fans idea was walked back by its original author after they got feedback from industry folks describing how the model was basically impossible to implement in the real world.&lt;p&gt;This holds 100% true to my experience in influencer marketing and esports. Monetizing fans is &lt;i&gt;really hard&lt;/i&gt; on passion alone. You need to create valuable calls to action and continuously produce content in order to maintain their attention. Once you &amp;#x27;lose&amp;#x27; a fan (which only means losing their emotional focus, even temporarily) you often can&amp;#x27;t monetize them &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt; without significant re-activation effort. [0]Demonstrating this, large influencers lose &lt;i&gt;extraordinary&lt;/i&gt; sums of money if they stop producing content for short windows of time.&lt;p&gt;This is why using influencers in marketing requires genuine strategy, and is the likely culprit behind so much &amp;#x27;hate&amp;#x27; for influencer marketing.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dexerto.com&amp;#x2F;entertainment&amp;#x2F;ninja-reveals-shocking-number-of-subscribers-he-lost-by-missing-two-days-of-streaming-100449&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.dexerto.com&amp;#x2F;entertainment&amp;#x2F;ninja-reveals-shocking...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chongli</author><text>It really is a buyer’s market in the attention economy. Viewers are fickle and it’s easy to jump ship if your preferred personality goes in a different direction.&lt;p&gt;Same goes for TV and video games. There’s just so much stuff being made constantly. It’s trivial for viewers&amp;#x2F;players to switch to something else.</text></comment>