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Vendor reportMetricool, 2026

TikTok accounts were the most likely to move up a follower tier in 2026 (16%), ahead of Instagram (9%) and LinkedIn (7%)

Channel validation

Percentage of accounts moving to a higher follower category in 2026, by platform

Percentage of accounts moving to a higher follower category in 2026, by platform
PlatformAccounts that moved up a follower tier (%)
TikTok16%
Instagram9%
LinkedIn7%
YouTube4%
Facebook4%
Twitter/X1%
Pinterest1%
Reader Note:
Growth here means crossing into a higher follower tier, not gaining followers: an account that grew but stayed in its tier is not counted. The tiers are the same on every platform, but the number of accounts sitting near a threshold is not, so part of this gap is where each platform's accounts happen to sit rather than how fast they grow.
Evidence:
Observed behaviour
Vendor interest:
Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:
24,364,803 Instagram posts from 375,118 accounts worldwide, covering January and February 2025 and January and February 2026 — a two-month window, not a full year. Accounts with zero publications were excluded, as were posts with zero impressions or zero interactions, so every average in the study is computed over posts that got at least one interaction. Accounts were segmented by follower size into Huge (1M+), Big (100K-1M), Medium (10K-100K), Small (2K-10K) and Tiny (0-2K). Outliers were not removed. Growth has a non-obvious definition: an account counts as having grown only if it crossed into a higher follower tier, so an account that went from 3K to 9K followers is not counted as having grown, and the study's own methodology notes that crossing Tiny to Small takes far fewer new followers than crossing Medium to Big — growth rates are therefore not comparable across tiers.

Good for

Comparing yourself against a similar segment, and choosing what to test next.

Not for

  • Saying that one thing caused another, or predicting what you would get.
  • This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
  • The source never says how this number was measured.
Channel validationTrend

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

Vendor report

GWI, 2026

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

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