Mining Twitter Gold, at Five Bucks a pop
by Gilad Lotan
May 31, 2014
Not to brag or anything, but I probably have more Twitter followers than you.
I wish I could say I earned them all with my erudite tweets. The truth is, I purchased many of them.
A couple of months ago I ran an experiment to see how easy it would be to up my online profile. As a data scientist, I was intrigued by the notion that not all followers are earned: There is a lively Internet business in selling followers — specially created fake accounts on Twitter or other social networking sites that were set up by enterprising businesspeople specifically to bump up follower numbers for people willing to pay.
Even though I knew that none of them had any interest in me or my tweets, I was still thrilled. Sixty-six hundred followers! -
I was curious to see what I could measure from this process. Would purchasing followers prove to be totally worthless? Or would having more acolytes — even fake ones — actually affect my life online?
More: Mining Twitter Gold, at Five Bucks a pop - Los Angeles Times