Money Can’t Buy Love, but it Can Buy Twitter Followers

At first blush, the act of purchasing twitter followers sounds like an invention of celebrity PR hacks to boost the egos of their vain clients. In reality, it is not only commonplace, but could even be smart business for start-up companies who utilize social media. It is human nature to “join the crowd” and a twitter account with hundreds of thousands of followers (whether fake or real) may garner more interest than an account with just a few legitimate followers. The practice is surprisingly easy—so easy, in fact, that it makes one question the validity of any “brag” heard regarding one’s twitter followers as it may be a stat that was not earned through hard work and social media. A simple Google search turns up numerous sites that sell Twitter followers—on some, you simply enter your Twitter handle and credit card number and watch your ranks of followers swell in just a few days. Some sources have reported purchasing Twitter followers for as little as a penny each and there are even ads offering 1,000 Twitter followers for only $5. While this practice seems sketchy, it may be just the boost a new company needs to get its social media going. In fact, this has become news in this election cycle after reports that both Romney and Obama have large numbers of fake followers. However, having fake followers does not necessarily mean they are purchased—anyone can follow you on Twitter and don’t need your approval to do so, including spammers.

Twitter followers are sold in two ways. “Targeted” followers are found using software that seeks out Twitter users with similar interest and follows them in hopes that the favor will be reciprocated. “Generated” followers are from Twitter accounts that are either inactive or created by spamming computers, or “bots.” The practice has become so commonplace that a web tool has been releases called the “Fake Follower Check,” which claims to figure out how many fake followers one has. Buying followers generated by “bots” is frowned upon and may be against Twitter’s terms. However it is legal. Twitter may be starting to clamp down on the spammers, however. In April, it filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against several spammers who create fake Twitter followers. The development of this area continues to evolve and promises to be an interesting topic of discussion for social media nerds and marketing professionals alike.

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Klemchuk LLP is an Intellectual Property (IP), Technology, Internet, and Business law firm located in Dallas, TX.  The firm offers comprehensive legal services including litigation and enforcement of all forms of IP as well as registration and licensing of patents, trademarks, trade dress, and copyrights.  The firm also provides a wide range of technology, Internet, e-commerce, and business services including business planning, formation, and financing, mergers and acquisitions, business litigation, data privacy, and domain name dispute resolution.  Additional information about the IP law firm and its IP law attorneys may be found at www.klemchuk.com.

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