Nobody Needs to Know How Many Friends You Have
The follower count is the single most consequential number in social software, and it did not have to exist.
Show a number next to a person and it becomes a score. Show it publicly and it becomes a competition. Almost everything unpleasant about mainstream social software can be traced to that one design decision.
What the Number Does to Posting
Once you can see your own count, every post becomes a small test of it. People start writing to the largest plausible audience rather than the actual one, and the writing gets worse in a very specific way — broader, safer, less true.
What It Does to Reading
A high count reads as authority even when it is not. We would rather someone’s contribution be judged on whether it was useful to the nine people who saw it.
We Do Not Even Store It
There is no follower count to hide, because there are no followers. Membership is per circle, and a circle knows its own size. Nobody can see the total number of people you are connected to, including you.
The Trade
You cannot build a personal brand here. That is not a bug we plan to fix — it is the reason the posts read like people talking to people.
