Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
News at 11
Sometimes it's better not having signature
"Some fake accounts look even better than real accounts do."
Well thank god for that. http://xkcd.com/810/
Irrelevant things are not relevant! Why was/is so much stock placed on the number of "followers" a person has? It seems as though this places unwarranted weight/emphasis on opinions and people that shouldn't really have that. (Read this as Ms. Jenny McCarthy ranting about vaccinations being taken as relevant to a real discussion on health care.)
Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally wo
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.
Meow
"Some fake accounts look even better than real accounts do."
Not that that's a very high bar...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.