Glitch Causes Mark Zuckerberg & Top Google Execs Drop From Most Followed On Google+

The irony of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg being the most followed person on Google+ is over. He’s disappeared from the top rankings, along with Google CEO Larry Page who was the second most followed and other Google execs. It’s down to a glitch, Google says.

Google+ allows you to show the number of people you follow in one or more of your “circles” to the world, if you chose. You can also show the number of people how follow you. Here’s an example of how it looks for Bradley Horowitz, the Google vice president who oversees Google Plus:

From Public Counts To Public Rankings

These counts are how sites like Google+ Statistics or Find People on Google+ create “most followed” lists for Google Plus. As of yesterday on Google+ Statistics, which updates regularly, Mark Zuckerberg topped the list, with nearly 140,000 followers. Today, he’s gone, replaced by Robert Scoble:

Follower Counts Go Missing

What happened? It appears that Zuckerberg, along with a number of Google executives, chose to go private over who follows them. (NOTE: This was due to a glitch, see further below).

For example, Google CEO Larry Page was formerly ranked number two. Now, he’s also gone, with no one listed on his profile of who he’s following or being followed by:

Also gone is Sergey Brin, who was ranked number three. Google’s social chief Vic Gundotra was fourth, I believe. He’s gone, too. So is Google’s local chief Marissa Mayer.

Matt Cutts, not a Google executive but a prominent Googler who oversees web spam, was ranked eighth yesterday. He’s now gone.

Still On Google+, Just No Follower Counts

To be clear, all of these people still have Google+ accounts. The Googlers are still fairly active publicly (Zuckerberg never was, at least in public). But en masse, a number of them suddenly decided to no longer show their follower counts. Whether this was after Zuckerberg dropped his count or before isn’t clear.

Why? No idea. If I learn more, I’ll update.

NOTE: Vic Gundotra later posted to Google+ this explanation:

This was glitch that affected small number of people – those with very high followers and few people in their circles.

If you enjoy speculation, well, read on for the rest of our original story. It raises the issue of what the service might be like if follower counts became “uncool” and other topics.

Change To Help Google+ Image Or “Real” Celebs?

I can think of some reasons, however.

For one, it kind of looks bad to some if your own social network is just dominated by people from your own company. But “getting out of the way,” so to speak, removes an easy poke that anyone might want to make that Google+ is just about Google.

For another, Google+ continues to have new people coming in, especially “real” celebrities. Rapper and actor 50 Cent turned up yesterday, completely with a semi-official welcome (and no issues, apparently, with a stage name being considered a violation of Google’s no “fake name” rules).

Since Google+ remains invite only, and still has a relatively limited membership, there’s no way for celebrities to easily skyrocket up in the follower counts. It takes time for word to go around that they are in the service. There are also questions about if they are real or not (is that really Richard Branson who joined two days ago? Seems so, but who knows?).

When the Google execs get out of the way, the celebrities have a shot at rising higher on the lists that are being compiled.

It’s “Cool” Not To Show Your Count

Going stealth on follower counts also potentially sets the stage for an excuse that the “cool” or “modest” thing to do is not to show your count. Back to 50 Cent, who has nearly 5 million followers on Twitter, he’s not showing a count on Google Plus.

There’s no choice on Twitter. You have a follower count by default, for public accounts. But Google+ provides a choice. And if your count is low — or you’re concerned that celebs coming in might have low numbers — then having Google execs suddenly all decide to drop their counts gives those celebs a nice excuse to do the same.

Too much conspiracy? Maybe. It is odd that this just happened. But for whatever reason, potentially, it could introduce yet another dynamic into the social space, where it’s very easy for people to obsess over follower counts or have debates over “influence” and “amplification” and instead bring a bigger focus on following people based on quality or subject.

That could be an interesting and refreshing new world. The problem is, right now Google+ still makes it pretty hard to locate people. You can search by name, but you might not find people who are actually active on the service. Searching by subject has proven disappointing, when I’ve tried it.

Brands remain in limbo. As for celebrities, despite Google Profiles having a verification system that existed before Google+, that was lost after the launch. My understanding is that this is being checked on, so maybe it will return soon. That would be a big help.

Ironically, one of the ways I depended on knowing if a new celebrity on Google+ was real was looking to see if major Google execs were following them. Now that some are going stealth, that touchstone becomes less useful.

In somewhat related news, you can now hide your gender, should you so chose.

Postscript: Vic Gundotra and Marissa Mayer have now reopened their follower lists. There’s also discussion happening on a Google+ post I started here. In it, Ben Metcalfe comments that some Googlers were using a privacy feature not available to the general public that may have caused some profiles to lose their public follower status.

Postscript 2: In case you missed it above, Vic Gundotra posted this explanation:

This was glitch that affected small number of people – those with very high followers and few people in their circles.