just saw this on venturebeat

[utuxia]

Twitter black market: buying and selling followers. The results don?t look pretty for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who looks to have acquired a significant number of fake followers

How can you tell if an account is fake? There?s no complete hard-and-fast rule, but here are some guidelines. Fake accounts usually:

• follow quite a few people, but generally fewer than 2001
• are young, having been created an average of 19 weeks ago
• have few tweets, or, if there are many, they look automated
• may not have a picture in the profile

And of course, The Info Graphic;

Source: http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/11/the-twitter-black-market-barracuda-on-dealers-abusers-and-fake-accounts/

 

[Hansa]

That's fascinating reading - Anyone know the similar stats for Pinterest ?

 

[utuxia]

That's fascinating reading - Anyone know the similar stats for Pinterest ?

Probably not as many, because I only know of one pinterest bot, and they shut it down. There are tons of twitter bots.

 

[ClThis]

deleted post

 

[sensitiveheart_4]

that's an awesome read

 

[SEOnetic]

I think someone needs to introduce them to fiverr. Seriously 19$ for 1k followers lol.

 

[utuxia]

It's probably all Romney fans who are following him w/ fake accounts. It's not like he is doing it, or his campaign manager -- I seriously doubt they would authorize that -- but then again, these old farts would probably do anything to get elected.