I agree with that, but how often does that really happen? It's pretty rare in my experience. Even the big curation projects have their own highlight posts so they link to you that way versus reblogging your stuff. I'm not arguing, just trying to see all sides of it. Thanks for the great comment!
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By "reasonable number of followers" I don't necessarily mean whale accounts. Even a reblog by someone with a few hundred followers could net you a couple of more followers. I think success on hive is gained pretty much like success on any other social media site. You build up a following over time. The more followers you have, the more eyes on your posts and the more upvotes. I think reblogs contribute to that. I know I frequently see reblogs in my feed and I follow new accounts that way pretty frequently.
I know what you mean about how big curation projects do their highlight posts though. I think they would help authors much more if they reblogged those posts instead of or in addition to doing that.
Is that still really the case though about followers? Without looking I don't know how long you have been around here, but I remember a time (before the hardfork) when there were a massive number of bot accounts that would follow your account every day. I think I have over 1000 followers but I would guess at least 900 of them are either inactive or not actual accounts.
Well, I mean I have no way to prove that I got any followers from reblogs or at least I don't know how I would. And I'm sure a lot of followers I do have are in fact inactive or bots. However, I'm just extrapolating from my own behavior. I occasionally find new people to follow via reblogs and since I assume that I am not that unique, my expectation is that at least some other people do the same. Why wouldn't reblogs from accounts you like and follow be useful for finding new accounts to follow?
I don't disagree with you, I am just saying that I seem to forget to reblog. Based on the comments it looks like I am not alone. It's good that you are able to find content you like because of it. Looks like I was way off on my followers. It's over 2000, I still the ratio is the same though.