5 New Yorkers Who Move The World On Social Media

Rob Grams • May 23, 2016

Just because social media is a global phenomenon, doesn’t mean we can’t root for the home team! Taking into account everything from YouTube to Vine, we have compiled a list of the 5 most influential New Yorkers across social media.

Love or hate these influential people, they will definitely make your feed a lot more interesting. Feel free to let us know if you have someone we’ve missed in the comments! Now, let’s check out the movers and shakers on social media in NYC.

Lena Dunham

Let’s start with NYC native and creator of the acclaimed series “Girls”, Lena Dunham. As if being a respected actress, writer, producer, and director weren’t enough, Lena along with Girl’s co-producer Jenny Konner, created “Lenny”. Lenny is a twice weekly lifestyle newsletter aimed at young women. In the last 8 months since it’s launch Lenny has gained over 400,000 subscribers. Lena sits at 4.6m followers on twitter.

Josh Ostrovsky (a.k.a. The Fat Jew)

Love him or hate him, The Fat Jew definitely belongs in this list. Just in case you’ve been living on Mars for the last few years with Matt Damon, Josh Ostrovsky is pop-culture commenter and plus-sized model. Last year the online celebrity faced controversy over plagiarism, using other comedians jokes without permission, which eventually led to the cancellation of a Comedy Central pilot he was involved with. The Fat Jew is the king of Instagram with 8.4m followers

Jimmy Fallon

The Tonight Show host has definitely made his mark online. He has been at the forefront of the Tonight Show’s dominance online. Fallon himself has over 42 million followers on Twitter, dwarfing the numbers of fellow late night show hosts. The Late Show (starring Jimmy Fallon) has over 11 million subscribers on YouTube, again, competing shows pale in comparison. Fallon himself once said: “Time slot doesn’t matter to me, If people want to see you, they’ll find you.”

Donald Trump

However much we wish we could, we simply can’t leave Donald Trump off of this list. Can we? It is in little doubt that he’s an influential figure, now more than ever. So love him or hate him, here he is. For better and for worse he has redefined how political candidates use social media. With his 8.3m followers on twitter, he is certainly winning the twitter race, having more followers than both Sanders and Clinton.

Brandon Stanton

Okay, so Stanton isn’t a New York native, but there is no doubt that he definitely deserves a place on this list. Stanton, who lives in Brooklyn, is the photographer behind the hugely influential Humans of New York website. Humans of NY has 17.6 million likes on Facebook and around 5.63 million followers on Instagram as of now. Stanton’s photos have caught the attention of influencers from far and wide, from Ellen DeGeneres to President Obama.