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Social Blade

Social Blade (sometimes spelled SocialBlade) is an American social media analytics website. Social Blade most notably tracks the YouTube platform, but also has analytical information regarding Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Social Blade functions as a third-party API, providing its users with aggregated data from these various social media platforms. Jason Urgo is the CEO of Social Blade.

History

Jason Urgo, the CEO of Social Blade, launched the website in February 2008, to track statistics for the website Digg.[1][2] In 2010, the website switched to track YouTube statistics.[2] In October 2012, Social Blade became an LLC.[1] In 2014, Social Blade launched consulting and channel management services.[1]

On October 24, 2018, Social Blade started a popular live stream to show the subscriber difference between T-Series and PewDiePie in an online competition.[3] In April 2019, the stream regularly had 900 viewers and led to a large increase of Social Blade's subscriber count.[4] To accompany the attention in April 2019, Social Blade pulled an April Fools' joke where they allowed users to change the subscriber counts and ranks to ridiculously high numbers.[5]

On December 14, 2022, Social Blade confirmed a data breach of 5.6 million records which was uploaded to BreachForums two days prior.[6]

On March 13, 2025, Social Blade updated their website to a more modern version, in the process removing statistics of Twitter, Trovo, Mixer, Dailymotion, and DLive; in regards to removing Twitter statistics from their service, Social Blade stated it was no longer allowed to use the cheapest API option of $200 per month, and that they should be using the Enterprise package.[7]

On April 1, 2026, the official Social Blade Bluesky account was verified.

Data collection and other functions

On its Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page, Social Blade wrote that "in order to best scale our tracking to meet the needs of millions that use Social Blade, we pull data from YouTube's public API. This means that we're getting the same information you see on public YouTube channel pages, we just work to examine that data across multiple days and aggregate it into a display format that is useful to you."[8] Social Blade is a website that contains subscriber predictions.[9] Social Blade also provides real-time subscriber count updates.[10]

Social Blade has also been noted to work with content creators and YouTube multi-channel networks (MCNs) to help creators get partnered.[11]

Recognition

Social media platforms

On December 19, 2016, an official YouTube Twitter account, @TeamYouTube wrote "Please know that third party apps, such as SocialBlade, do not accurately reflect subscriber activity." Social Blade's Twitter account responded to that tweet, commenting "We don't make up data. We get it from the YouTube API. We rely on it for accuracy." Social Blade's community manager Danny Fratella suggested that YouTube content creators may notice subscriber and view count purges more due to a higher accessibility to data-tracking tools like Social Blade.[12]

Media outlets

HuffPost wrote that "Social Blade estimates earnings for each YouTube channel based on the money generated for every thousand ad views. These estimates aren't exact. Instead, they create a minimum and maximum amount that a channel could be earning; in some cases, the range can be huge.[13] Social Blade's support services manager, Jenna Arnold stated that "the range is huge because the CPMs [cost per thousand views] vary SO much. They can be anywhere from $0.25 to $4.00 on average."[13] Urgo has also commented on the $0.25–$4.00 per 1,000 views range, stating "these data points change from time to time and are not an exact science, but generally hold true for most channels.[14]

References

  1. Jason Urgo. Nine Years of Social Blade! Social Blade, February 8, 2017, retrieved December 27, 2018^
  2. All About Social Blade Social Blade, retrieved December 27, 2018^
  3. PewDiePie is YouTube's most-subscribed channel. He's about to be dethroned. Washington Post, retrieved 7 January 2019^
  4. Alex Walker. The Dumbest Race On The Internet Is Finally Over KoTaKu, April 1, 2019, retrieved April 11, 2019^
  5. Matt Porter. April Fools' or hacked? Social Blade features altered PewDiePie and T-Series pages April 1, 2019, retrieved April 11, 2019^
  6. Eduard Kovacs. Social Blade Confirms Breach After Hacker Offers to Sell User Data SecurityWeek, December 16, 2022, retrieved June 1, 2025^
  7. https://x.com/SocialBlade/status/1900589770671071518 Social Blade, March 14, 2025, retrieved July 15, 2025^
  8. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Social Blade, retrieved December 27, 2018^
  9. Staff Reporter. PewDiePie Briefly Lost Top Spot On YouTube Tech Times, 2019-03-20, retrieved 2019-03-26^
  10. Stephanie Dube Dwilson. PewDiePie vs. T-Series Live Subscriber Count Heavy, December 17, 2018, retrieved December 27, 2018^
  11. Julia Alexander. YouTube networks drop thousands of creators as YouTube policy shifts Polygon, April 24, 2018, retrieved December 27, 2018^
  12. Cecilia D'Anastasio. YouTube Views Are Down, Analysis Says Kotaku, December 23, 2016, retrieved December 27, 2018^
  13. Damon Beres. YouTube Stars' Huge Earnings Will Make You Question All Your Life Choices HuffPost, February 5, 2015, retrieved December 27, 2018^
  14. Ben Collins, Kalhan Rosenblatt. YouTube shooter repeatedly posted grievances about the video platform NBC News, April 4, 2018, retrieved December 27, 2018^