Who said you can’t buy popularity?

Apparently, in Twitter terms, you can.  Popularity on Twitter is measured by the number of followers you have – turns out these followers might not all be real.

Barracuda Networks has unveiled the “underground economy of buying Twitter followers” where buying and selling thousands of fake accounts is rampant, fueled by huge demand.  After establishing three bogus profiles, Barracuda researchers tested just how challenging and pricey it was to buy followers.  A simple Google search revealed tens of thousands of fake accounts available for sale on eBay and a whole plethora of third-party websites.  The cost?  A mere $18 per thousand profiles.  Barracuda went on to estimate that a single dealer could make as much as $800 per day for almost two months with 20,000 fake accounts under his control.  Sound like a lot of profiles to control?  Not when you consider that Barracuda found 78 sources for illegitimate accounts from dealers controlling as many as 150,000 accounts each.

Paid Twitter follower services is a serious concern of mine.  This questions the legitimacy of social networks in general.  Facebook admitted that almost 9 percent of its users could be bogus – that’s 83 million accounts (and growing)!  Social networks need to find a way to figure out how to deal with this situation to ensure user trust and online security for the future.  

http://www.pcworld.com/article/260705/buy_your_way_to_a_flock_of_twitter_followers.html 

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