Should it be followers instead of following?

[yabi]

I read following article about the death of a chess prodigy, Naroditsky.

World chess body probes former champion Kramnik over US grandmaster's death

Vladimir Kramnik repeatedly accused fellow chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky of cheating in the year before his death.

www.aljazeera.com

During his final livestream on Saturday, Naroditsky told his massive online following that, “ever since the Kramnik stuff, I feel like if I start doing well, people assume the worst of intentions. The issue is just the lingering effect of it”.

I couldn't understand the meaning of following on above sentence. I think he is livestreaming for his followers and it should be folloers, not following. And also if it is not followers, the word online before following sounds strange.

Will be happy if you could elaborate it.

Best Regards
Rasul Khoshravan

 

[jutfrank]

Each individual person is a 'follower' but the group of followers collectively is the 'following', which is also a noun. This is why the word 'massive' can be used as a modifier—the people themselves aren't massive but the whole group is, as there are lots of people in it. The second modifier 'online' means that this group of people are listening to him via the web.