No sooner did the Vancouver Canucks’ Twitter follower count reach the 300,000 mark than the next generation of “Orca Bay clappers” did their self- congratulation in the virtual world. (The Orca Bay clappers were a mid-’90s phenomenon. Whenever the Canucks or Vancouver Grizzlies held a news conference, staff filled the room and provided the applause.)
But I digress.
The Canucks have regaled us with an alleged sellout streak at Rogers Arena. Now Canucks Sports and Entertainment claims to have 100,000 more Twitter followers than the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I beg to differ after using Status People’s Fake Follower Check. The social media management platform is gaining attention for an app that allows one to enter a Twitter handle and a quick gauge of how many followers are good, inactive and fake. A kind of good, bad and ugly for the social media age.
I ran @VanCanucks through Fake Follower check on August 29 when the franchise claimed 300,525 followers. The result was 37% good, 42% inactive and 21% fake. Based on that, the Canucks would have only 111,000 “good” followers.
It seems that the fewer the followers, the less likely there are fakes and inactives.
The BC Lions had 21,076 followers, of which 62% were good, 30% inactive and 5% fake. The Whitecaps’ 28,504 were 57% good, 34% inactive and 9% fake.
The moral of the story? While social media is the hot place to be, you need to scratch the surface to get accurate numbers.
Full disclosure: my score of 3,721 Twitter followers was 88% good, 9% inactive and 3% fake.
Photo ops
Politicians love to have their photographs taken and hobnob with champion athletes.
Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot’s friend, Premier Christy Clark, showed this when she tagged along with South Korean defender Young-Pyo Lee to his appearances in Coquitlam after he was inked last December.
So it was rather odd that Premier Photo-Op wasn’t looking for lenses at the Vancouver Golf Club on August 26 when amateur teenage phenom Lydia Ko, a South Korea-born New Zealander, became the youngest winner of a professional golf tour stop in history.
The provincial government was listed as a sponsor of the tournament. Sport minister Ida Chong wasn’t at the trophy presentation. Neither was Clark supporter Harry Bloy, a local Liberal MLA who was once given a social membership to the Vancouver Golf Club.
But notably present among the firms with a table in the fully catered 17th hole luxury suite was Barkerville Gold Mines. The BC Securities Commission issued a cease-trade order August 14 over skepticism of the company’s gold estimates.
Armstrong’s weakness
Before the Ride to Conquer Cancer, there was the Tour de Courage, which took place in fall 2007 in Vancouver and Kelowna and raised $1.8 million.
Lance Armstrong was the featured attraction. It was his first media appearance since ex-teammate Floyd Landis was banned and stripped of his Tour de France win over a positive synthetic testosterone test. Armstrong, who won seven times, had the chance to say something – anything – to protect the integrity of his sport. But he didn’t.
“I’d love to answer the question, but I’m out of that business,” Armstrong said. “I’m here to fight cancer.”
Now we’re told by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that Armstrong was in the business of cheating, too.
But despite his fall from grace, Armstrong’s 1991 Gastown Grand Prix win remains, and the organizers have no plans to pull the race from YouTube.
