American Idol Social Media Totals: Season 12 vs Season 11, Plus Supervote!

By On 03/05/2013 · 6 Comments · In American Idol, American Idol 12

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I thought you guys might want to take a peek at the the Twitter/Facebook follower totals for the American Idol Top 20 contestants. Angie Miller and Lazaro Arbos are leading both Twitter and Facebook followers by a wide margin. Janelle Arthur and Kree Harrison are in the Top 5. But look at Burnell Taylor. He’s 3rd in Twitter follows and dead last on Facebook. Burnell’s completely untouched Facebook page likely explains why he’s got so few followers in that platform. On the other hand, he has been engaging his fans pretty regularly on Twitter. Zoanette Johnson gained several hundred followers on micro-blogging website when she decided to tweet, finally, this afternoon.

Just for fun, let’s take a look at a story I put together last year for Entertainment Weekly at about the same point in the competition.   The Top 24 contestant with the most twitter followers? Heejun Han. And we know what happened to him. Out in 9th place!  But he was very entertaining, so it’s no wonder he initially amassed a large social following. But look who was second. Yep. They guy who would eventually take it all–Phillip Phillips.  The eventual 7th place finisher, Colton Dixon, was 3rd and the season 11 runner up, Jessica Sanchez was 5th–behind Eben Franckewitz (WHO you’re asking? He’s the adorable teen who butchered Adele in the semis). Pretty random…eh?

However, there is speculation that the introduction of the Super Vote will favor those with the highest social network followers. The idea, is that those who hang out on Facebook will be able to easily power vote for their favorites. But the limit is 50 votes per week. That’s nothing compared to the ability to vote again and again for the same contestant via phone and text during the entire voting window. The Supervote would only have an impact if there were voting limits in place on ALL platforms, as The Voice has in place.  (The Voice 3 winner, Cassadee Pope, would have had a harder time benefiting from the ever-changing iTunes voting rules if there was unlimited voting on other platforms, I believe).

I’m also not convinced the Supervote will favor young voters.  I’m on Facebook, and so are tons of people from my high school graduating class, and I’m…we’ll let’s say I’m not young, and leave it at that.  There are more middle aged folks on Facebook than the conventional wisdom would have you believe.  And anyway, if a contestant captures the viewers’ attention–I don’t care if we’re talking about 100 year olds–they WILL find every available method to vote for their favorite.

But in any case, if Angie Miller never lives up to the promise of her buzzy original song in Hollywood? She’s going down, and no number of social networking followers or Super Votes will save her, because she’ll be abandoned for a shinier, more compelling contestant, who will undoubtedly be the recipient of all the Super Votes he/she is allowed.

Twitter Followers

Angie Miller 8397
Lazaro Arbos 6568
Burnell Taylor 2646
Janelle Arthur 2427
Kree Harrison 2417
Paul Jolley 2147
Aubrey Cleland 2004
Candice Glover 1981
Adriana Latonio 1655
Cortez Shaw 1529
Zoanette Johnson 1313
Nick Boddington 1149
Devin Velez 1149
Charlie Askew 1091
Breanna Steer 1050
Elijah Liu 908
Amber Holcomb 883
Curtis Finch 854
Tenna Torres 578
Vincent Powell 549

Facebook Followers

Angie Miller 6083
Lazaro Arbos 3094
Janelle Arthur 2594
Kree Harrison 1884
Aubrey Cleland 1853
Paul Jolley 1399
Nick Boddington 777
Candice Glover 666
Cortez Shaw 362
Adriana Latonio 286
Vincent Powell 206
Tenna Torres 204
Breanna Steer 196
Elijah Liu 178
Curtis Finch 160
Charlie Askew 125
Zoanette Johnson 114
Devin Velez 91
Amber Holcomb 79
Burnell Taylor 65

 
  • Pat S

    The Supervote is without a doubt the single most idiotic move they’ve ever done. At least with The Voice’s Top 10 Itunes Supervote they were making money off of the gig and it showed who was marketable.

    Who benefits from this? Teenagers with facebook accounts. Weren’t we trying to temper their influence by not putting through any WGWG’s?

    How much of the casual audience votes maybe 5 to 10 times by phone? A lot of them. 

    Now their votes make a fifth or a tenth of the difference and we’re at the mercy of power voters and facebookers.

    And can you imagine people from VFTW with 20 or 25 alternate facebook accounts? They can put up a thousand votes each in minutes! 

    Say VFTW has 40 people on their site. 40 people with 25 facebook accounts each with the Supervote is fifty thousand votes!

    A hardcore voter could power vote for 2 hours in previous seasons on their phone and maybe break 500 votes total. Now it can be done in 15 minutes with 10 facebook accounts.

    Absolutely moronic.

  • girlygirltoo

    I know it’s early, but these twitter and FB numbers seems awfully low, even for the more popular contestants. 

  • ptebwwong

    I don’t like the Supervote. 

    But if Idol does what The Voice does and counts iTunes sales it’s very possible that certain contestants will actually be worse off that are talented. For example, there was a glitch last year that revealed iTunes sales for a specific week. Phillip was still leading on iTunes. Colton was next. Jessica, Joshua, & DeAndre were next (not sure if Jessica or Joshua was in correct order). The iTunes sales was actually accidently revealed more than once last year. Phillip & Colton were both in the top 3 all times.

    Guess what. If we went on iTunes votes that week, Idol voters and buyers still only want white guys.

  • http://twitter.com/bluinjewin Landon Cox

    You can get 50 votes in like 2 minutes from copy/pasting vote over and over again on you AT&T phone. I doubt it’ll make that much of a difference. 

  • Miz

    I’d like to see them count in iTunes sales. 

  • fantoo1

    Before the switch, Angie had like 20k followers. Still early. Once they perform I’m sure the numbers will go up.