…. Soooo something interesting is going on in this brain of mine… I work in social media… for the greatest company in the world… and we started judging our online strategies and partners based on how many followers they had… and how many views something had… and spending money based on that… but then we got a negative mention on a blog.. .and sure enough… she had 60,000 followers… panic ensued…. I took a closer look… 60,000 followers… and no comments on her blog… 60,000 followers and I had never heard of her… So I began to do some research… I found companies that sell followers for an extremely low price… shell accounts essentially… and wondered how easy it was… In the sense of full disclosure I tweeted what I was doing and tested it out… Yep! sure enough… New followers… I went through the painstaking process of deleting them so that I wasnt misrepresenting myself… but then something weird happened… I got more followers… I can only assume that this is because I suddenly showed up on the recommendation list to a bunch of other shell account followers because I certainly didn’t ask for them… at one point… I’m thinking I pissed someone off by testing this theory… So I woke up to another 1000 followers this morning… and a coupon code tweeted to me if I want more… Ooohhh Proactive advertising of fake people… I stayed awake last night thinking about this… Tweeted openly about it… because I can’t tell who is fake or real anymore… and Decided something…. I am not a number… My influence is not decided by my followers… My opinion isn’t less important… and my ideas are certainly not less genius… So… before you judge me.. By my many followers (I think about 1150 of them are real LOL) …. In fact…. Reach > Following … and one has nothing to do with the other…. Next I will research the buying of Klout points… Dont tell me who the experts are… or suggest that I am not one!
I always found it interesting when someone has tens of thousands of followers within a week or two of creating his or her account on twitter or the like.
For me, I would much rather have a few active, interested followers than a giant number of fake people.
Completely agreed! I mean, Im not even selling anything LMAO!
I still don’t know what klout is but I see it constantly on twitter. I think your idea is the best. Who wants fake followers?
Ha! I looked up my Klout score this morning.. its some ridiculous number (47) too funny
Yes, I noticed that as well! I was languishing down around 10 or 12 for the longest time, and now 46 or something?
Really amazing blog!
I wonder how far that type of shady marketing is embedded. And does this mean that someone has the job of adding the groups in realistic numbers?
Probably in everything… who’s music we buy… who’s articles we read… we look for validation that other like them… by their following… sad really