Modern platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels use an interest graph instead of follower counts to decide what goes viral. A small initial audience's engagement signals likes, comments, shares trigger algorithmic scaling to millions of views, even for creators with almost no followers.
The other thing I'll say too is you don't necessarily need a lot of followers for a lot of views today because the way X works or the way like a TikTok or Instagram Reels or Facebook Reels, they just, they call it, it's not just social media anymore, right? We call it, it's more based on the interest graph, right? And so if you post something really good, it's going to get a lot of views and it just, followers don't matter nearly as much as they did before. I think even when you look at like a YouTube, like a Short, for example, YouTube long form, I think followers still matter a little bit, but not as much as before, right, Neil? Followers matter very little.
So social media has become democratized. It doesn't matter if you have a million followers or 100. You guys have all seen the girl that says, I'm looking for a guy in finance, right? 6'5, blue eyes or something like that went viral. And then she did a song, I believe, with David Guetta. You guys have all seen the guy who's drinking cranberry juice and longboarding on a skateboard or whatever it's called, a longboard, because his car broke down. And then everyone started buying cranberry juice and then I believe they bought him a new car or a truck, right? What I'm getting at here is these people didn't have a lot of followers, yet they went viral and they got millions of views, if not hundreds of millions of views, and created internet memes and sensations. What happens is if you have content and you put it out there, it doesn't matter if you have 10 followers or 100 followers, what the platforms all do is they show it to a small group of people that they think would be interested. If every single one, I'm giving you an extreme example, watched it, liked it, commented, and shared it, they did all 3, then after they showed it to 10 people who do that, they'll start showing it to 500 or 1,000. Now you may not get all 1,000 to do that, but if you had 20% like it, share it, comment on it, and watch it 3 times, it starts going viral because engagement is high and the platform knows that people love that piece of content, so they share it to anyone that they think would be interested.
