Twitter Followers Now For Sale By USocial: $87 for a block of 1,000

News Type: Event — Seeded on Fri Jul 3, 2009 8:41 AM EDT

Article Source: webhostdir.com

technology, twitter, social-media, social-marketing, tweet, sell-out, jumping-the-shark, usocial, nuking-the-fridge

Followers are available in blocks starting at $87 (£53) for 1,000. The biggest block uSocial is selling is 100,000 people. USocial said businesses and individuals were queuing up to use its follower finding service.

Leon Hill, chief executive of uSocial, said the company finds potential followers by searching Twitter and working out what individual users are interested in. It also profiles where people are so it can more closely match users with those they might want to follow.

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What's this?

Who's leading the conversation?

This visualization below allows you to see the impact that each user has on the current conversation. The top row contains the group of users who have had the most impact, the 2nd row the group of users who have had the 2nd most impact (et cetera). Users with similar impact are grouped together, and the average score of the group is shown to the left of the group. The author of the article is also shown on the left, in their corresponding group. Each user's score is based on the number of comments the user has made plus the number of votes their comments have received. The scores are calculated relative one another, so while their absolute value is not particularly important, their relative difference does indicate a larger difference in impact on the conversation.

3.1

1.5

{"commentId":8002984,"authorDomain":"killfile"}

Killfile

So get ready to get spammed into oblivion by Twitter/USocial's campaign. Even if they have a fairly high success rate, their price structure pretty well ensures that you're going to get lots of messages if things go well for them.

{"commentId":8002984,"threadId":"618535","contentId":"2994300","authorDomain":"killfile"}

1 vote

#1 - Fri Jul 3, 2009 9:21 AM EDT

{"commentId":8045072,"authorDomain":"inghar2004"}

gladbutterfly

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs, and spam. I'm so sick of spam and now we get it on Twitter too? Just when I was happy with Gmail's spam filter, now we need one to protect us from Tweets&Spam.

{"commentId":8045072,"threadId":"618535","contentId":"2994300","authorDomain":"inghar2004"}

1 vote

#1.1 - Sun Jul 5, 2009 9:38 PM EDT

{"commentId":8048323,"authorDomain":"redwolf"}

Red Wolf

Actually, no, I don't get Twitter spam. I get constantly friended by spambots (meet my delete key) and occasionally inundated with trivial drivel from friends, but it's currently one of the services that you have to explicitly follow spammers.

If these morons start paying currently legit members to spam, then those accounts will rapidly drop their followers and become worthless as spam vectors too. It will be easy to sell it to the gullible, just like most crappy SEO services, but it's not going to be a terribly worthwhile service in practice.

{"commentId":8048323,"threadId":"618535","contentId":"2994300","authorDomain":"redwolf"}

#1.2 - Mon Jul 6, 2009 5:18 AM EDT

{"commentId":8003971,"authorDomain":"masternav"}

MasterNav

Yep - guess its time to dump my little-used Twitter account. Many of my friends are on it - but I never saw the sense of it. And yes, I have heard the myriad justifications for its existence. None of those are truly of interest to me. Facebook is far and away enough info for me to handle at any time.

{"commentId":8003971,"threadId":"618535","contentId":"2994300","authorDomain":"masternav"}

1 vote

#2 - Fri Jul 3, 2009 10:53 AM EDT

{"commentId":8016776,"authorDomain":"redwolf"}

Red Wolf

Clipped to the Anti-Spam group for reference.

Not surprised by this, but it's a service that's been set up by someone either too stupid to understand the nature of Twitter or someone who's banking on his customers being too stupid to figure it out. Just because a spammer wants to follow me, doesn't automatically mean I'll follow him in return, so you may not be getting real eyeballs seeing your spam. However, it does make for a good business model because Twitter is so pathetically lame at booting spammers off the service that the spammy content will hang around forever.

One of the more amusing aspects of spammers on Twitter is that when you find them, few real people follow them, it's just clusters of spambots communing with each other.

{"commentId":8016776,"threadId":"618535","contentId":"2994300","authorDomain":"redwolf"}

2 votes

#3 - Fri Jul 3, 2009 11:17 PM EDT

{"commentId":8045087,"authorDomain":"inghar2004"}

gladbutterfly

LoL, clusters of spambots conversing. I love it.

{"commentId":8045087,"threadId":"618535","contentId":"2994300","authorDomain":"inghar2004"}

1 vote

#3.1 - Sun Jul 5, 2009 9:40 PM EDT

{"canLink":false,"threadId":"618535","isPrivate":false}

KILLFILE

Backyard

Twitter Followers Now For Sale By USocial: $87 for a block of 1,000

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