Three-dollar-bill Followers on Medium
I don’t know how many recommends is enough but one of my current ambitions is to be number one in Denmark.
thomdahl made a list of the top thirty most-visible Danes on Medium back in November and if the numbers are reliable then I am hovering at around 118.
Let’s take a closer look at the top dog, number one on the list.
Martin Ferro-Thomsen appears to have 3,100 followers on his profile. However he has only four articles listed on Medium.
Here are the recommends for these articles: 2, 5, 3 and 0.
0 means that Martin didn’t even bother to recommend it himself. Neither does he appear to have understood that clicking recommend on your own story is a way of letting your followers know that you’ve published.
I fail to see that Mr. Top-of-the-list Martin Ferro-Thomsen has written any successful articles at all. Recommendations are, however, not neccessarily an accurate reflection of value.
Martin hasn’t uploaded a single article since Feb 12, 2015.
Not even his 3,100 apparent followers have bothered to like his four articles more than 10 times (aggregate for ALL articles on his profile).
My followers are MUCH better than that. Check them out here.
Here is Martin’s most successful article, with a whopping FIVE recommends:
This means that not even the staff of the PR company to whom Martin presumably outsourced his writing have barely bothered to recommend, not to mention his “thousands” of “followers”.
Martin calls himself “a good guy” on his profile. I don’t know about you, but I give guys who call themselves good or nice, a wide berth.
Once I was in the railway station in LA. A man started following me.
(Subtext: I am gorgeous and sexy, in case you missed that.)
I have at least one admirer on Medium: thank you Thomas R. Barton, JD who tells me I’m beautiful and smart all the time. I just love it when people sing my physical praises. Which I also do myself here.
A wise man once said that beautiful women like to be told they’re smart and smart women like to be told they’re beautiful. I like to be told both. Oh dear, Emma Gad wouldn’t like that, bragging about your conquests.
“I’m just trying to help”, he said (the man in the LA railway station), “I’m a nice guy”.
I’ll save the rest of that story for another, very different kind of article. Suffice it to say, it dosen’t end well.
It’s like when someone says, “Trust me”. Nobody ever says that unless there’s a thousand reasons not to.
Dear Martin,
for a reasonable fee which will be a FRACTION of what you pay your PR people, I can write a weekly article to your profile with YOUR thoughts and YOUR ideas. The internet is CRYING OUT for authenticity. BTW, I am already writing love letters for my friends that will make you weep if I haven’t pissed you off completely by exposing what appears to be, well, what appears to be… aaaah….mmmmm…
Just respond by clicking the speech bubble below. You DO know how to use Medium, don’t you?
xxx
Your future ghost blogger,
Augusta
#2. Kris Østergaard, 2.2K followers. Having only briefly skimmed your profile, there are already two things that arouse my scepticism:
- Your reference in your profile to “the book”. Which book might that be, exactly? The Book of Mormon? The Bible? The Talmud? The fourth book that I’m afraid to mention in case I literally get blown out of the water?
2. Your irreverent bandying around of the word “exponential”.
It dosen’t look good, Kris.
You claim to be a professor and yet your profile sentence dosen’t make any sense.
Congratulations, you’ve written your first listicle. Astonishingly, it only has one recommend. Where are your 2.2K followers? Like the Senate’s inaction with regard to Merrick Garland, they’re just not doing their job.
Your followers job is to like and recommend and respond to your articles.
Your followers have fallen asleep, Kris.
Let’s see who they are… from the top…
Kris’s followers:
Scott King: No real articles, only comments. But 884 followers.
Mafia Hairdresser: Zilch. But wait for it, 1.1K followers.
Catherine Juon: Three recommendations. Nothing else. Not even a comment. 969 followers.
Christian Bering: Three recommendations. Nothing else. Still no comment. A mere 294 followers.
There seems to be a pattern here.
# 3 Anders Høeg Nissen, with 982 followers is a very different story.
On April 24 of THIS year, Anders wrote a comment. One comment. And at the beginning of January, he tells us his new year resolution : “Less, but better”.
Congratulations, Anders, you have 100% lived up to the first part of your new year resolution for 2016.
Your first two followers are “just getting started on Medium” and your third follower seems vaguely familiar… where have I heard that name before…?
Christian Bering (See above)
This reminds me of the Danish fairy tale, “Tordenskjolds Soldater”. A military boss makes his twenty men walk past a window hundreds of times to give the impression that he’s got a huge army.
Anders has a grand total of 10 aggregated recommends.
#4 Christian Lanng 920 followers.
Again, Christian, like #1 Martin before him, has actually written an article. Three in fact. His 920 followers have also given him an aggregated 9 likes. Need I say more?
Well, yes, I do want to say more. Just as I was swinging away from his profile I notice that Christian writes an article called “When Going Digital Fails Your Business”. I am beginning to understand why Christian’s version of going digital is failing your business.
# 5 Kasper Villum Jensen 612 followers
No articles, no comments, three recommends.
Follower #1 Patrick Bay Damsted is just getting started on Medium… blah, blah, blah.
Follower #2 Once again, it’s Christian Bering. Now where have I heard that name before?
At Last, My First (Somewhat) Worthy Opponent
#6 Randahl Fink Isaksen 683 followers is the first on the list who actually got any responses to his articles and who has written something recently. He published an article FIVE DAYS AGO.
Randahl has written several articles of which this one is eminently readable:
It seems to be a well-researched article with a little personal-anecdotal-vignette thrown in. It got 107 recommends so Randahl does have an active following. I will take it at face value. BTW, I fucking LOVE the photo. Even though I am very sceptical about this most-visible-dane-on-Medium article, I simply don’t have time to check Randahl’s sources. Forgive my cynical tone, it is born of “come back later to see what so-and-so has written”.
Primary Results
The real election will be later.
Congratulations Randahl, you are in the running for being the #1 Dane on Medium. This is subject to a verification of your followers.
#7 Søren Hugger Møller 455 followers. Søren likes sarcasm and that’s fantastic ‘cos I got plenty of it for him. If my stories aren’t sarcastic enough for him, I suggest he moseys on down to Ellie Guzman, one of the most brilliantly funny writers on Medium. Søren’s #2 follower is Patrick Bay Damsted, a name I’ve seen before and yes, there he is again, Søren’s #3 follower, Christian Bering. One of Søren’s stories actually got 14 recommends.
#8 Lars K Jensen 369 followers. Lars has actually written several articles, one of which garnered 5 recommends.
This is a pretty good article too, I even fully understood the first 75% of the article:
Lars has recommended several articles and is an ACTIVE user of medium, having just an hour ago linked on his twitter profile to this excellent article:
Lars also likes books. So he can’t be all bad. Congratulations, Lars, you are also in the running for being #1 Dane on Medium. Check back later.
#9. Sublidens 366 followers. Sublidens claims to be Denmark’s most credible and popular bringer of true news from a parallel universe and claims six million daily visitors. Well, Sublidens, do I have news for you: to be a bringer of news you need to write articles daily. Your last article was on Feb 3 and your first ten followers are empty husks. I imagine that your credibility and popularity do indeed stem from a parallel universe.
#10. Thomas Christensen 350 followers. Thomas is fighting for a better world. Ain’t that just wonderful? Thomas shares his existential angst (this is the home of Kirkegaard, after all) and throws in a little dating advice on the side. I hesitate to turn the big guns on him in case he really does have a shitload of money and I need him to invest in my next start-up. Oh, what the hell…
Here are some of his musings. The article is in Danish, but you’ve heard of translation software, haven’t you?:
This is a good article with a cute idea: show-me-the-film-poster-in-your-living-room-and-I’ll-cut-you-down for it. Thomas’ sarcasm has potential but he’s got a long way to go before he can even be in the same room as Ellie Guzman. This could have been a fantastic article if Thomas had found himself a better editor (me, for example) or any editor. He’s got a very promising mean streak:
#11 Sara Green Brodersen 370 followers. At least a handful of Sara’s followers are more than just empty husks and that’s good news because Sara has started a company evaluating trustworthiness.
Sara uploaded an article as recently as May 17 of THIS year and her English is perfectly idiomatic. Although Sara’s 13 recommends are far from the best-performing article of Randahl Fink’s 107, she at least has 13 active recommenders, if not followers. Here Sara is playing the woman card, to rally the tech women of Denmark behind her:
Sara shows sure signs of being a real contender for the #1 slot.
Steffen Kjærulff 225 followers. Several articles here that are serious and that give real value. He is the first on the list who generates real value in his articles and knows his stuff. The ideas are clearly described with the confidence of a person who knows what he’s talking about. Uh-oh, his first follower is Patrick Bay Damsted, see above. His second is Christian Hvashøj, an empty husk, Dan Bjørneboe, ditto, michael dreves, ditto, Eva Kirstine Bach has recommended one article (wow), Andrew Tiscoe, one comment but again, 129 “followers”, Steffen Ørsted has recommended three articles and has 130 “followers”. I wonder if they’re the same ones that Andrew has.
Empty follower profiles mean nothing and can be misleading. Follower activity is more important than number of followers.
