Who has the most Facebook Fans? A few stats.

I saw a tweet yesterday from @kanter (Beth Kanter) retweeting a question from @farra (Farra Trompeter) asking how to find out how many facebook fans a NPO has...

I was curious myself, and so did a little google search and found that this link would list the NPO's  in order of number of fans (mostly in order). Then I wondered about which arts groups have the most fans. Maybe there is an easier way, but I found myself clicking 'next' for page after page, sort of like putting nickels into a slot machine.... who was going to win.  It was addictive. 

I think the first arts group showed up on page 76 of the search in the Non-Profit category.  It occurred to me that some fan pages got started before the 'non-profit' option was set up, and others might simply have chosen other ways to describe themselves. 

So I did further searches, on 'orchestra', 'symphony', 'museums' and finally 'places'

....and the Unofficial results are in!  

Fans as of 11:30 PM Nov 20, 2009  (I know I should have been sleeping not clicking)

Museum Types

Museum of Modern Art             190,421     (WOW!)
Metropolitan Museum Art          89,896
Le Louvre                                 58,071
Design Museum                         49,405
Guggenheim                             38,335
Monterey Bay Aquarium            36,880
Smithsonian                              34,890
Art Institute Chicago                 23,650 
City Museum of St. Louis           22,948
Tennessee Aquarium                  21,370
Getty                                       18,850
Salvidor Dali Museum                17,134
Victoria & Albert                      16,867
Tate                                         15,743
SFMoma                                    14,543
DIA                                           14,001
Whitney                                    13,470                                             
MFA, Boston                              12,140
Amer Museum Natural History    11,941
Louisiana Museum Modern Art    11,720
Brooklyn Museum                        9,485
Children's Museum                       9,010

Performing Arts Types

Metropolitan Opera                   26,142
Berlin Philharmonic                   23,835
Sydney Opera House                  20,010
Royal Opera House                    18,115
Chicago Symphony                    14,107
New York Philharmonic              12,292
New York City Ballet                  10,301
London Symphony                       9,298
Stratford Shakespeare                 8,892
Oregon Shakespeare                    8,462
Vienna Philharmonic                    5,078
Boston Symphony                        4,870
San Francisco Symphony              4,073

There is a good possibility I may have missed someone, as I was getting a bit click happy, but interesting results never-the-less.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

I can see that I have my next interviews lining up - lots of questions to ask.

• Does more fans mean anything?
• Does more fans translate into greater attendance, dollars raised, participation?
• Can little organizations have lots of fans?
• What's better - more fans, or deeper connections with fewer fans?

What other questions should I ask when I interview all these amazing people in these orgs?

For example,

• Le Louvre has ZERO updates from them listed on their page. Build it and they will come?
• Do places like the Sydney Opera House have so many fans just because its a cool building or because they are doing something special to engage with their audience?

PS -  Great post from Geoff Livingston about "What 100K followers [fans] gets you".

In the meanwhile we have one little baseline stat for the arts. Where do you fit in?