Fake Friends, Love For Sale
Recently, Michael Learmonth of Advertising Age did a post about uSocial selling followers and friends to give the impression that a company’s Twitter or Facebook page are wildly popular. Sort of if you can’t make it then fake it.
I know this is nothing new; affiliate marketers have been doing this for decades. I guess for some, the perception of popularity is good enough.
I suppose this type of service was inevitable and we’re likely to see more companies like uSocial crop up. But, as many of the commenters of Learmonth’s post point out, tactics like this fly in the face of what social networking is all about. And the danger to social networks like Twitter is that they become irrelevant to the people who matter most. And the truth is: there is always another social platform around the corner; maybe its Posterous or Netlog or Lifeblob.
There is an inherent risk when a social community becomes too big. As more and more “marketers” (and I do use the term loosely here) jump aboard the Social Media bandwagon (e.g. Twitter grew 1,444% over last year as of May), the more they clog these communities with useless tweets and mindless blog-babble (or blabble). The personalities that make these communities worth the effort of participation move on and you’re left with PR agencies pitching to other PR agencies.
To be fair, I see how tempting it is to “game the system” with so many competitors vying for the same eyeballs and clients growing impatient for results. Who has the time to build meaningful relationships… lets just buy ‘em. The problem with this line of thinking is it is self-deluding. If your goal is to generate real conversion then obviously paying for followers or friends fails to do this. Of course, you might be thinking: I need to appear popular in order to attract real conversion. Maybe but this is a slippery slope (and one I plan to put to the test and report back on in a follow up post). If enough people are gaming the system then these “stats” become meaningless, visitors will catch wise and assume any high number has been jerry-rigged.
The wonderful thing about the Internet is that it is a self-correcting system. Whenever there is a flaw in one product, a new product comes along and fixes it. For example, lets say you are following 5,000 people on Twitter but most of the time only 20% of the tweets are useful and you don’t want to miss them. You can use tools like TweetDeck or HootSuite to group and prioritize your Twitter feeds, making your social media life easier and more efficient. There are more tools like these going beta every month, designed, in part, to address these types of unintended uses (or abuses).
July 13th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Ha ha great
Salamande
July 11th, 2010 at 5:10 am
My wife will get sad if she hears this.
Lisandra Reppell
July 9th, 2010 at 10:44 am
OMG, How will I ever survive without your articles? Bye, Hugo Muzii
June 17th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
I absolutely love reading your posts.
June 1st, 2010 at 9:12 am
This is really good stuff.
June 1st, 2010 at 4:53 am
Great Blog. I add this Post to my bookmarks.
May 31st, 2010 at 1:22 pm
I just sent this post to a bunch of my friends as I agree with most of what you’re saying here and the way you’ve presented it is awesome.
May 17th, 2010 at 6:28 am
There is going to come time when all this just doesn’t matter anymore. That will be awesome.
May 7th, 2010 at 5:39 am
Great blog, really.
May 6th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
I think the trend is moving away from this sort of behavior. Audiences are becoming more sophisticated about technology. Businesses need to invest in supporting their efforts in social media and not leave it up to interns who know nothing about the company.
May 5th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I’m seeing more and more services like these popping up everywhere. They are like the paid infomercials of late night television… if you are still watching after the first minute then you’re the kind of customer they’re looking for. A fool and his money are easily parted. Likewise, if you think paying for friends and followers is acceptable then you’re deluding yourself… and you don’t understand social media.