Slashdot Mirror
Inside Social Media's Fake Fan Industry
jfruh writes "It's an open secret that many high-profile users of social media networks pay to pad their fan counts. But what you do you get for your money? One blogger decided to shell out some cash to find out. Instead of the real human fans he was promised, he found himself followed by a motley collection of obvious fakes created by non-English speakers and accounts that seem to mainly exist to spam porn links."
Big deal, there's fake people on the internet.
The actual problem here is the value that is placed on having a high number of followers, likes or whatever. Back in the MySpace days this was simply a bunch of teenagers who wanted to claim some vague kudos through having more "friends" than others, but these days the marketing industry has latched on to it and people/companies are placing a real financial value on it. This is a problem - it's a bubble in the making, and when it pops there are going to be some pretty bitter recriminations and a lot of money lost.
So if you want to collect lots of followers, fine, it's up to you. But if you believe there's any financial value in it then I've got some tulips you may be interested in purchasing as an investment...
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
That I am shocked, yes, shocked at this despicable behavior. Next your going to tell me that it doesn't make any difference if I vote for Obama, Romney or the tooth fairy.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Facebook's sponsored links are no better these days...wrapping you around multiple malware sites for the illusion of free tickets to Dark Knight Rises...takes less than two clicks to find either boobs or 'three of these offers must be completed plus five subsequent offers but never'... Imagine that...people believing everything they read on the internet... Or how i purchased a Hulu account with some thought that it would reduce the number of commercials...which actually increased (i apparently only purchased the ability to watch on my PS3????) Telling people that others will like them if they pay money...SMH
There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.
I'm bemused that the story about people padding their fan list is broken up into four separate screen pages, with only 5 paragraphs on the first page (I didn't bother to go any further), but the story itself was prefaced with an ad, had 8 full-fledged ad blocks on the main page, plus many more blocks with links to other stories and the various "Like me on X" buttons.
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On Facebook, high profile users not only pay to get more followers, but once they do, they must pay again to actually communicate with them. Unless you pay, FB only lets postings go to a few hundred followers. If you want more people to see your post, you have to pay a fee to "promote" your post. If you have 1 million followers, it can cost close to $1k per posting.
During the dotcom bubble, companies were ridiculed for business plans that were based entirely on "selling eyeballs". FB has taken the same business concept to next level. I'd like to see an independent audit of Facebook's DAU metric and their 1 billion MAU claim. The company asserts that only about 8% of user profiles are fake and no analysts challenge that statistic. Clearly, it is not in Facebook's interest to weed out fake accounts; on the contrary, their revenue depends on them.