If you are active on social media, you must have come across terms or numbers like 1k, 3k, 2k, 5k, 100k, and so on. Have you ever wondered what 1k could mean in terms of money, value or price? Or you are wondering about what 1M means or says about pricing or cash.
How much do you like to see zeroes behind a digit like 90000000? Do you like to count these zeroes? What do these zeroes tell? The amount of money, right. Everyone likes to see as many as zeroes behind digits while determining an amount but nobody wants to trouble themselves with the task of counting Zeroes.
There comes the concept of putting K and M after digits or values to make it shorter. Looks like this concept is especially introduced for lazy people. Sounds funny but no, that’s not true. It’s now in existence and has replaced multiple zeros with K and M which is equivalent to a particular value. From Twitter likes to Instagram followers, values are now shown with the help of these alphabets.
However, it’s an interesting topic to have a conversation about. Let’s get you into some deep detail and answer all the things you are curious about. 
What does 1K or 1M mean?
1K – 1000 or One Thousand
100K – 100000 or Hundred Thousand
1M – 1 Million or One Lakh or 100000
There’s a thing when a new world or society comes into existence, a new language also comes out as a way of their communication. 1k or 1m – this is the language of social Media. 1K refers to a value of 1 thousand. Ultimately the variable “K” means 1 thousand while “M” is used to refer to ten lakhs.
When you see 16.7k written somewhere, it means 16700 and 5.4M means 5400000 or 54 lakh. So what happens is that letters K or M works as a suffix to a digit and substitutes the zeroes in order to simplify the value. Remember this formula doesn’t apply with money as the million in currency rates can vary.
This is very basic information that you must know before you enter finance or funds related fields on social media or anywhere else. But we have to dig deeper and get into its depth to understand this concept and reason for using letters better.
Why is the reason behind using K or M ?
Logic behind using M to denote 10 lakh is obvious. 10 lakhs is called Million in international table and M is the initial letter of it. So, just like many other abbreviations the first letter is selected to use as an abbreviation to Million. Like LG for “Life’s Good” or FOMO for “Fear of Missing Out”. It’s quite understandable right? But the question arises why K is used to denote thousand when it starts with T?
In the Greek language, there is a term ‘Kilo’ for which K is used as an abbreviation. Kilo means Thousand which you must also be aware of. In India also, people weighed food or solid items in Kilos which liquid in litres.
1 Kilo – 1000 grams
1 Litre – 1000 millilitres
Now you know why K is used to denote a thousand of something. K was first used by French scientists to denote thousand while the term ‘kilo’ is believed to originate from the Greek language Khiloi.
What does 1K mean in Money?
Money is a magnet towards which everyone gets attracted at some point of their life. Knowing money so well, you must have come across the net value or net worth of a company, an official or a celebrity in millions. 1 Million means 10 lakh rupees in money. So, when you see 10M, it denotes 10 times ten lakh which means 1 crore. But the value of the same is changed when counted in dollars.
10M USD is calculated after multiplying 10M with the US dollar exchange rate which is around 75 right now. So if we calculate, the actual amount would be Rs. 72,824,491.
Why do we use K and M?
Now if you are given an option to choose between 71.5k and 71500, what would you choose? 71.5k right? Yes, because it consumes little space and is convenient to read. As people are leading busy lives in the present time, digital slang has become a part of our lives. We use shorter words or abbreviations for quicker and easier communication.
To type faster, people have converted “For Your Information” to “FYI” while for “As soon as possible”, people use ‘ASAP’. These short forms are extracted for the convenience of people. Just like these abbreviations, digital slangs are used to save time. Using K for a thousand or three zeroes and M for a million or six zeroes save you some space and time to read.
1k and 1M On Social Media
In the beginning of the article, I explained that K and M are something usual for Social media. This terminology is quite common for social media as you can see Instagram followers and Twitter retweets in the form of _k or _M. Now every famous social media page you go to, you will find a number of followers in K or M.
Getting 1K followers is a big achievement for users on Instagram. So, think how crazy someone will go once he gets to see his or her follower count in M or millions. It just makes one feel like a popular personality be it a celebrity or sports star. But nothing comes for free. To achieve something, there’s a price for you to pay. To grow your followers to M, it takes a lot of patience, consistency, content, time, quality presentation skills and much more.
Be it Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin , Twitter, Snapchat or any other social media platform, having such a substantial number of followers can get anyone overwhelmed. The level of excitement has to be high otherwise it wouldn’t be that special. To see M after your follower number, you have to put in a lot of effort, do plenty of hard work as well as smart work.
Strategies are the key to reach a high follower count, so you must have that planned in your mind. If not, go read our previous articles where we have explained everything about Instagram followers and strategies to make the grow.
