For the past three years, I've been collecting statistics every six months on the most popular poi channels I'm aware of to gauge interest and overall industry health. Last year, I expanded this survey to include Facebook likes and this year it's expanded to include Instagram followers as well. Overall, the industry picture is good with overall subscribers and views up since the same time last year.

A few caveats: this is an imperfect effort and sometimes I don't think to collect statistics from the right channels. Over time I've done my best to ameliorate this problem, but it is still a work in progress. If I'm not collecting statistics from a channel, Facebook page, or Instagram feed that I should be looking at, email me at drex@drexfactor.com to let me know.

YouTube Performance

Though facing stiff competition from both Facebook and Instagram, YouTube remains to the most-used and farthest reaching content platform for poi spinners. Compared to last year, YouTube channels that feature poi spinning content are up 39% in view counts and nearly 42% in subscribers. Half of the top 10 most viewed channels are run by Americans but only 2 of the top 5 are. Nick Woolsey's Playpoi channel maintains a commanding lead over the next most-viewed poi spinner on YouTube: Lindzee Poi with over 12 million views compared to 3.5 million, respectively.

Channels I currently collect data for: meenik, yuta, zan00, flowtoys, NathanielEverest, TaoAvatar20, alienjon, poiboi07, MArvin Ong, meelosapiens, cyrillehumen, iduali, fueegen, timmehtek, flowdaddy92, poipriestess, FlowArtsInstitute

Facebook 

I only started collecting Facebook stats in July of last year, so I cannot compare their performance in the first half of 2014 with the first half of this year. Nonetheless, all the top 10 Facebook Pages I've collected data for show strong increases in likes for the past 6 months. In particular, Lindzee Poi is showing a deft hand for accumulating likes, more the doubling the likes he's accumulated as compared to his nearest neighbor.

These are currently all the Facebook Pages I collect data for.

Instagram

This platform has shown explosive growth in the past year as it transforms itself from a photo to video sharing platform. The short length of the videos coupled with the mobile-first approach to user interface makes this the platform to watch in coming years both as it is among the most popular for users under the age of 25 and it is ideally suited to sharing content internationally with people who have access to cell phone but perhaps not to tablets or computers. This is also the platform for which my numbers are likely to be the least accurate as I find new channels all the time and some (like tips4flow) can in 6 months go from very small numbers to impressively large one. This platform is still anyone's game.

Instagram channels I currently collect data for: tips4flow, elemensce, timmehtek, drexfactor, yeenoel, master0ng, flowmamba, flowart.tv, flowdaddy92, greghaskins, tyfoods, a.nagachevskiy, tommydanger5, poipriestess, flowtoys, lillq, chriskelly110, johnnyjuanguardiola, therealexuro