So­cial­Blade: social media data on demand

Fame, spon­sor­ing contracts and big money - this is what some YouTubers dream of. To make it easier to achieve this dream, the video platform YouTube provides a practical analytics tool to help them optimize their content and attract more sub­scribers. However, not everyone can master its complex interface. Many users instead resort to using tools from third-party providers. So­cial­Blade is one of the most popular of these providers. In the following sections, you will learn about the functions provided by this tool.

So­cial­Blade uses these social media websites’ public APIs (ap­pli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming in­ter­faces) to access the data they share. As a result, this website is currently tracking more than 27 million YouTube channels, eight million Twitter profiles and seven million Twitch accounts (as of April 2019). However, that is not all it does. So­cial­Blade also analyzes the data it collects and presents the results in a clear format so that these results can then be shared with video producers, companies and news portals. A smart­phone app for iOS and Android is also available.

When the CEO of So­cial­Blade Jason Urgo launched his website in February 2008, it was initially only used to track data from the social net­work­ing website Digg, thus only reaching a niche audience. In an effort to create a service for all social media users, he ended up de­vel­op­ing So­cial­Blade. In a blog post from February 2017, Urgo described it as a tool to cut through social media al­go­rithms and find out how they work and grow.

Urgo, who has been using the pseudonym Urgo6667 as a Youtuber himself since 2007, orig­i­nal­ly used YouTube Analytics as well as a third-party tool which is no longer available online. In response, he redi­rect­ed So­cial­Blade to focus on per­form­ing analytics of YouTube starting in 2010. As a result of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Maker Studios (now one of the three largest pro­duc­tion networks for YouTube videos), the project gained momentum in February 2011, and So­cial­Blade was of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­tered in October 2012 as a limited liability company (LLC).

So­cial­Blade is currently tracking more than 50 million social media accounts from seven different platforms (as of April 2019). Seven million users visit the website every month, many of whom even visit it several times per day. In the global Alexa ranking system, it is ranked at 792 (as of December 2018). Urgo himself ad­ver­tis­es the project which is dear to him, as the number one source for YouTube sta­tis­tics outside of YouTube itself.

Since its launch, So­cial­Blade has presented itself as a forward-thinking company and is con­stant­ly expanding its range of products and services with new functions and services.

The website’s main job is to collect and compile YouTube data which it obtains through the public pro­gram­ming interface YouTube API. So­cial­Blade then presents this data in a visually appealing and easy-to-un­der­stand format which is available to all visitors free of charge. For example, you can find “top lists” on the website which provide an overview of the YouTube channels with the highest number of views and sub­scrip­tions for specific countries or subjects.

If you are instead looking for more detailed in­for­ma­tion about a specific channel, you can enter either its URL (for old channels) or its username (for new channels) in So­cial­Blade’s search bar.

If you plan to use So­cial­Blade often, we recommend creating your own dashboard account. This is ab­solute­ly free on the website and also gives you access to ad­di­tion­al features. You can add up to five social media channels as favorites to your overview page (i.e. your dashboard) which allows you to con­stant­ly monitor them. Reg­is­tered users also receive regular progress reports which they can have au­to­mat­i­cal­ly sent to them by email.

Pro­fes­sion­al YouTubers and other pro­fes­sion­als can choose from four different types of premium accounts: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Mem­ber­ship costs between US$3.99 and US$99.99 per month depending on the account and adds a number of features. For example, you will benefit from being able to add more favorites as well as from sig­nif­i­cant­ly longer analysis periods (in some cases periods going back up to 356 days).

So­cial­Blade’s latest in­no­va­tions include “Report Cards”. You can use these to clearly display your channel’s most important key figures and save them as PDF files, which can then be shown to potential business partners, for example. Since 2014, this website has also been offering con­sult­ing services which are certified by YouTube and include video chats with experts on topics such as marketing and SEO.

So­cial­Blade owes its success primarily to its part­ner­ship with the multi-channel network (MCN) Maker Studios. It is thus hardly sur­pris­ing that the website itself also offers a partner program.

So­cial­Blade works in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Canadian digital en­ter­tain­ment company Broad­bandTV Corp (BBTV), whose network includes the NBA as well Sony Pictures. Together they support So­cial­Blade YouTubers receiving a minimum of 500,000 views per month in all aspects of their creative work, from content pro­duc­tion to marketing and digital rights man­age­ment.

Partners who have suc­cess­ful­ly applied will be promi­nent­ly featured in various parts of the website and will have access to exclusive resources such as Epidemic Sound’s library which contains thousands of royalty-free musical tracks to be used in the pro­duc­tion of YouTube videos. In return, So­cial­Blade often keeps a portion of the revenue generated by each channel. This varies based on the in­di­vid­ual contract.

If you use YouTube as an ad­ver­tis­ing platform or monetize your own YouTube channel , you have probably already come in contact with the YouTube Analytics tool. Tech­ni­cal­ly, this tool offers all the in­for­ma­tion you need for your channel, so why should you consult So­cial­Blade?

The CEO Jason Urgo argues that the existence of his website is justified because it presents the available data in a more com­pre­hen­si­ble and user-friendly way and thus provides users with even deeper insight into analytics. In addition, So­cial­Blade does not just provide data about the user’s own channel but about other people’s channels as well.

But are the sta­tis­tics compiled by this third-party provider reliable?

When it comes to US media platforms such as Money, NBC and HuffPost, the answer is yes. In the past, these and other industry pro­fes­sion­als have often used So­cial­Blade as a source such as for the estimated revenue of famous YouTubers.

However, there is a major issue in how the estimated revenue is cal­cu­lat­ed. These figures are only rough estimates based on certain CPT values which reflect the ad­ver­tis­ing cost per 1,000 clicks or views (cost per thousand). Since these costs are only known by the channel operator and YouTube itself and can range from a minimum of US$0.25 and a maximum of US$4.00, the “estimated earnings” provided on So­cial­Blade have large ranges with a dif­fer­ence of several thousand to even tens of thousands of dollars between the lowest and highest estimated revenues.

With such a large range, the analyzed channel is likely to fall within it, but this es­ti­ma­tion does not include the ad­di­tion­al cost factors related to YouTuber ac­tiv­i­ties. These factors may include the network’s share, taxes, con­tri­bu­tions to private health, pension and un­em­ploy­ment insurance, pro­duc­tion software and hardware expenses as well as any ad­ver­tis­ing revenue lost when viewers use ad­block­ers.

For this reason, YouTube has stated on one of its official Twitter accounts that third-party apps such as So­cial­Blade cannot ac­cu­rate­ly reflect sub­scriber ac­tiv­i­ties (and the resulting revenue trends). Fur­ther­more, the video platform has a time-related advantage when it comes to its own data. On So­cial­Blade, the frequency with which a channel page is updated depends largely on how much traffic it generates. The data is usually updated once per day. However, if there is not much user interest, this may only be done in a piecemeal fashion.

In response to YouTube's tweet, So­cial­Blade posted its own statement: "We don't make up data. We get it from the YouTube API. We rely on it for accuracy" (@So­cial­Blade, 19 December 2016). As the website’s FAQ further explains, the tool is not supposed to be a re­place­ment for YouTube Analytics anyway. It is intended as an ad­di­tion­al resource with which users can quickly view user-friendly in­for­ma­tion about other people’s channels as well as their own.

In con­clu­sion, the data on So­cial­Blade to some extent does allow you to draw con­clu­sions about the per­for­mance of specific social media channels, recognize trends and improve your content based on this in­for­ma­tion. If you are a pro­fes­sion­al looking for a skilled in­flu­encer, you can also make use of the analytics tool to help you separate the real sub­scriber magnets from those who buy followers.