The YouTube Boom
Europeia Sees Unprecedented Surge in Recruitment
Nation Count Reaches Over 1,000 for the First Time in Almost a Year
Written By Punchwood
Europeia Sees Unprecedented Surge in Recruitment
Nation Count Reaches Over 1,000 for the First Time in Almost a Year
Written By Punchwood
Europeia, and indeed NationStates (NS) as a whole has seen phenomenal growth in the past few days, with an army of new nations joining the game. The sudden surge of new nations began on Monday, after a video on YouTube was published by the channel Drew Durnil. In the video, which currently has 153,000 views, Drew founded his own nation and explored the various mechanics in NS, and even stumbled upon a recruitment telegram from Europeia’s very own First Minister Istillian. Almost immediately after the release of the video, the creation of new nations saw a sudden uptick and the sheer volume of new nations caused some severe lag on the NS website. Since Monday, the creation of new nations has only recently slowed down and currently, NS has seen growth of around 26,000 nations, a growth rate of almost 14%. The sudden surge of new nations is reminiscent of the "Imgur Boom" seen in 2016, which saw a similar surge of new nations after NS was advertised on the platform. The similarities between the two surges have lead some to refer to this current event as the "YouTube Boom."
Recognising the huge potential for growth, the Ministry of Interior began a massive recruitment effort on Monday. Initially, the Ministry called on all its recruiters to engage in as much recruitment as they could, however, the Ministry’s call soon went out to all citizens of Europeia, with the Ministry asking as many citizens as possible to sign up as recruiters to take advantage of the sudden surge in new nations. The Ministry’s recruitment efforts have certainly paid off, with the region’s population has increased from 914 to 1,391 representing a percentage change of 52.2%. There has also been an unprecedented surge in applications for citizenship with a total of 49 new citizen applications since Monday.
When asked for a comment about his Ministry’s performance during the recent surge, Minister McEntire told EuroWeekly: “This was an all hands on deck effort. Our amazing recruiters handled the surge admirably, and everyone jumped right in. Particularly Peeps, SEC, and Monkey posted huge recruitment numbers. Le Libertie, among others, jumped in to answer questions on the RMB. Our fantastic admins were swamped with the surge. Everyone manned the battle stations, and I couldn't be more proud of the team we have in Interior.”
His Deputy, and the person currently in charge of recruitment within Europeia, Peeps, echoed the Minister’s praise of the region’s recruiters saying: “Overall I have been very pleased with how the Ministry of Interior has handled the surge. If you compare us to other major UCR's we had the highest % increase of nations and almost all of that has been due to our amazing recruiters who have sent over 10000 tg's [telegrams] this week.”
The question many are now asking is what effect the sudden surge will have on Europeia and how many of the new nations and citizens will remain active after the surge in nation formation inevitably returns to normal levels. The importance of retainment and the integration of new citizens was highlighted by both the Minister and Deputy Minister when speaking to EuroWeekly. Minister McEntire said “Now, the challenge is continuing steady pressure on recruitment and integrating all the newcomers. I'm confident in our abilities. This was certainly a shot in the arm for the Ministry this early in the term, and I'm just lucky to have the fantastic team that I do.” The Deputy Minister gave a similar response stating: “The next important step will be to ensure they are integrated and stick around, so far they seem to be sticking around.”
