Fake Twitter Followers Becomes Multimillion Dollar Business

RougeFemme writes "There are more than two dozen companies that sell fake Twitter accounts. Those that sell them claim to make up to one million dollars per week. Two Italian security researchers estimate that there are as many as 20 million fake Twitter follower accounts. It's very difficult to tell the different between fake and real Twitter accounts saying, 'Some fake accounts look even better than real accounts do.'"

Comments

The "why" that the article misses...

[meowgoesthecat]

One of the comments on the article was more informative to me than the article alone...

"...When I needed to get people to pay attention to something quickly, I created a twitter account, paid for 30,000 followers, and then followed about 1000 people I had identified as having mattered. In return over the next two days roughly 400 of those "people who mattered" had followed me -- in part I am sure because my Twitter account said it had over 10,000 followers.

Over the next two weeks Twitter killed off all of the fake followers BUT I retained the real followers who might not have paid any attention EXCEPT for the initial batch of fake followers.

It is NOT about spam. It is about purchasing "legitimacy" quickly."

You're welcome.