What does 10 million Facebook fans mean?
Bryant Simon is a professor of American history and culture at Temple University and the author of “Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks.” The views expressed here are his own.
Last week, the Harvard Business Review published a long interview with Howard Schultz. The Starbucks CEO talked about the coffee company’s many moves to win back customers and battle against the ill winds of the recession.
As evidence of Starbucks’ rebound, Schultz pointed to the biggest of the social networking sites out there. “We’re the number one brand on Facebook,” he boasted.
Starbucks, in fact, was the first brand to top the 10 million-fan mark. Just to put this in perspective, that’s more fans than the entire population of New York City (8.2 million) and all but seven states in the U.S. That’s more Facebook fans than its closest rival, Coca-Cola (8.3 million fans) and way more than other large global brands.
McDonald’s has 2.5 million fans. Target has 1.43 million, Abercrombie and Fitch 1.37 million, and the trendy teen clothier Forever 21 totals 1.27 million. Among high-end food and food-related brands, Ben and Jerry’s has 1.35 million Facebook fans with Whole Foods lagging behind with just 296,152 fans.
The other day, my Facebook page (I have 302 friends) told me that many people who like Barack Obama also like Starbucks. Turns out the President is one of Starbucks few Facebook rivals. He has 10.9 million fans, a few more than Starbucks. But Starbucks still has more fans than Sarah Palin (1.93 million), Mitt Romney (460,832), and Bill Clinton (353,583) combined.
Most pop culture figures don’t reach Starbucks’ level of fans either. Apart from Facebook leader Michael Jackson (16.6 million) and Lady Gaga (12.9 million), the coffee giant has more online backers than Bruce Springsteen (880,459), Adam Sandler (5.44 million), and even teen idol Justin Bieber (7.88 million).
A quiz about face book popularity. What’s the difference between Starbucks & Obama?
Answer: I can give up my Starbucks today & not think twice about it. With Obama I’ll have to wait until 2012 to dump this brand,and the aftertaste will last a lot longer !