Fake Twitter Followers

Sitting cross-legged in the leather chair of my home office, it took me fifteen seconds to find someone who was willing to sell me 2,500 “quality Twitter followers” to boost my account — for the low price of about $25 bucks. The followers would arrive in three days and stick around for the whole year, more than doubling my current follower count of around 1250. I felt pretty comfortably smug about myself, especially considering I’d gotten this far by dumbly typing in “How to buy Twitter followers” into my Chrome bar. I leaned in, determined to make the transaction, and tried to convince myself to click the button.

Turns out, buying followers is probably the worst kept secret in all of social media — and it has a potential for a nasty and public backlash. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney experienced one such scandal in late July, when his Twitter automagically garnered 116,000 followers in a single day; suspicious, no?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngreathouse/2012/08/27/celebrities-with-the-most-allegedly-fake-twitter-followers/

Celebrities With The Most (Allegedly) Fake Twitter Followers

I was shocked by the headline: “71% Of President Barack Obama‘s Twitter Followers Are Fake.” By this measure, of the President’s nearly 19 million followers, 13.5 million are bogus. Irrespective of your political affiliation, one must admit that nearly three-fourths is an extremely high percentage of phony followers, causing some pundits to suggest that shenanigans may have been employed to bolster the President’s social status.

And The Most Authentic Twitter Personality Is…?

President Obama’s troubling Twitter follower score caused me to wonder to what degree other leading Twitter personalities’ followers were largely nonexistent. To this end, I used StatusPeople’s online tool, which estimates the percentage of followers which are: Fake, Inactive and Good.

The results were surprising. The arguably least-authentic personality on the list, Kim Kardashian, has the most legitimate followers of the Top 15 Tweeters, with 43% of her Twitter fans judged by StatusPeople to be real and active. Ms. Kardashian’s genuine percentage is more than double that of the lowest ranking member of the list, Shakira, with a paltry bona fide estimate of 21%. Even more disheartening, Ms. Authentic herself, Oprah Winfrey, per StatusPeople’s ranking, placed a mediocre tenth place, with only 26% of her followers extrapolated as real and active.

The following list is ranked from the highest to lowest percentage of real and active Twitter followers, not by each celebrity’s total followers.

StatusPeople notes that their results are inexact, as their algorithm samples a portion of a Tweeter’s followers and then extrapolates relative percentages across the entire data sample. In addition, pioneer Tweeters with longstanding Twitter accounts are more apt to have a higher percentage of inactive users. However, given that all of these are mature Twitter accounts, it is safe to assume that the results are accurate/inaccurate on a relative basis.

Where Do Fake Twitter Followers Come From?

There are a number of services which sell fake Twitter followers for the socially deficient. Prices range from $10 for 1,000 auto-generated Twitter followers to $1,350 for 1,000,000 counterfeit followers. The other source of fake followers are spam bots which follow users with the hope they will receive a reciprocal follow, which allows them to send spammy direct messages to the Tweeter.



At first glance, the extremely large percentage of inauthentic followers is rather astonishing, given that the average Twitter account has a fake percentage in the single digits. Yet, I am not suggesting that any of the above celebrities purchased bot Twitter followers, nor do I have any direct evidence that this is the case. Although one can imagine that the temptation to cheat is strong among handlers responsible for managing a celebrity’s social media network.