Have you seen those people who have 20,000 or 30,000 followers on Twitter, not know who they are, and wonder how they were able to get that many?
They may be the niche superstars like John Saddington that anyone outside of blogging circles may not know, but a better guess is that they may have many followers who are not real. A lot of the time the empty accounts are simply spam bots from marketing companies designed to promote and annoy, but unfortunately several times it is more of a case that the user being followed has bought fake users.
The infographic below can give you a better understanding of these fake accounts, but we have pulled out three great points here:
- More than 11 thousand Twitter users have each purchased 72,000 fake followers or more.
- Some of the biggest reasons for people to buy fake follower: herd mentality, spamming, or popularity contest.
- Politicians have been hit hard (or profited quickly) from a huge influx of followers and 25% of them never having ever sent out their own tweet.
What do you think should happen to these accounts:
- nothing,
- lose their followers,
- or get their account deleted?
[Image via SocialSellingU.com]
Jonathan Assink says
Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger…
Eric Dye says
😀
Ben Miller says
I see reports like this, and I’m very skeptical that anything wrong is going on in the majority of these accounts. For example, in the infographic, they list 10 accounts with millions of followers, all of whom have fake followers. What incentive does YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook have for buying fake followers? None.
I hardly ever use Twitter. I have 13 followers, all of whom I know personally. And yet I’ve probably had twice as many fake followers try to follow me. I recognize them as such, and report them, which blocks them from following me. But if I was a prolific blogger with an active Twitter account and thousands of followers like John Saddington, there’s no way I’d be able to screen individual followers like this. I’ll bet John has lots of fake followers, and I’m sure he’s never paid for followers.
Darryl Schoeman says
Good questions about Facebook, Twitter, and the like. But maybe the fake followers are the ones who initiated the following so as to give the appearance of being a real follower?! Just a thought.