Did you buy twitter followers?

Hi, I am rich and I would like to buy you as my friend. Can I do that in real life? I guess not but can I do it online? On twitter? On facebook or even youtube channels?

I've always been ranting talking about this issue over twitter and to some of my friends on the social media scene. I seriously hate cannot agree with people who buy followers. Before I go on, this is one of the many available links that you can buy "friends" from.

In fact one of the most popular platform is started by none other than the famous Mark Zukerburg. Known as LIKE STORE. You have no idea who Mark is? Nope, he is not the founder of Facebook but he is the founder of like store. Read more about Mark here. 

Anyway, my point is why do you want to buy followers and buy like? Are you really that desperate to get friends or look famous? I will probably not blame most of these people who really buy it but more often I blame the marketing people(yes, including myself) which indirectly causes this to happen.

FYI to readers who has no idea why I am blaming the Marketing people, it's because very often our clients/bosses would like to know if the return of investment(ROI) to a certain bloggers is worth the money and on top of the clicks on their blog, what we will normally do is that we will actually estimate  calculate the number of reach/read base on their number of followers/readers/likes/fans on all the platform a blogger is on and than we will compared to our traditional media rate card from traditional media to give each blogger a "pricetag". 


For example, a certain size advertorial on certain magazine gives you 300,000 reach for $2,500 for an issue which is 30 days and than we will take a blogger's reach for example 5,000 reach and we are paying him $250 for an advertorial and if you multiply the reach by 6 and the price by 6 it is actually cheaper than going to traditional magazine where you still have to provide artwork and such which adds up the cost. Thus a blogger with higher reach will make be more "valuable" in that way. 


Please do not quote me that this is how everyone calculates the price or this is an industrial standard but I am just giving a daring assumption here but the idea is around there and because of this, it causes the bloggers to be very numbers sensitive. And of course, I am also not saying that more numbers of followers mean you are more influential or talented in anyway.

So with all these "wannabes" how can we identify who is really popular and who is not?

There are a few ways to identify and I am not saying that I am 100% right but this could be one of those signs that you can read.

Suspicious looking followers. 1 might be a bot, 2 might be coincidence but if it's a back to back of 50-60 numbers of more followers who follows a lot and very little followers and they all looks similar to what not on the list, they are most likely purchased followers.

There are also some other signs like - "list", "date of joining twitter" and even "number of tweets".

Let's take a look at some of the REAL popular local tweeple. Of course I am talking about Xiaxue and Mr.Brown.

Both of them are the Queen and GodFather of blogging and twitting in Singapore and they each have 100k and 60k followers respectively. They are both listed over 1,000 times, join twitter for more than 3 years at least and twitted around 20k +-.

Let's take a look at some local celebrities who are on twitter. Generally they are popular and on traditional media which makes them gain followers easier right?

This is Nat Ho and Joanne Peh and each of them has 18k and 28k followers and they are listed around 281 times and 418times. As they are celebrities, they do not even need to tweet a lot to get followers cause they are celebrities.

Even for Ex popular blogger Dawn Yang. She has some decent numbers.

And what about some normal users?

This is Mr. @CTHam, my good friend from twitter who has a very balance number of following and followers. Member since 09, listed 139times for twitting about things like photography, politics and humor.

Let's take a look at some of the accounts which I find it very very questionable.

From the way on how I look at it according to how I analyst what we have before, this person has 46k followers but only listed ONCE. He tweets less than 200 times and attracted 46k Followers. Is he a celebrity? NO. 

Member since '11 which means this acct has been around for less than 18months. Listed 8months tweeted 174times and has 174k followers which is even more than XX. 

This person twitter 37k times, listed 31times and has 22k followers. Not a celebrity. Not a "popular" blogger but has the same number of followers like a celebrity. Does not even tweet interesting stuff and more like using it as an IM and chat. 

Some of the account above looks really questionable but what about this one? 2k followers, 6k tweets, has been around for awhile but I'm not too sure how real this is either as I remember the numbers kinda hike overnight and this account do have some very weird followers. 

I guess you guys pretty much get what I am trying to say here. I am not trying to name and shame anyone because I didn't and neither am I encouraging you guys that numbers is important which is why I am paying attention to it but what I am trying to say here is that people who are on this platform long enough can easily identify you if you are real deal or not. There might be a lot of clients who are ignorant and you might be able to get away with it but in a long run are you sure this is what you want? 

Moreover, there are many sites who can track your followers gain graph as well. So if you have followers gain consistently of 166 per day OR a sudden jump of 5,000 followers, it is pretty obvious you are doing some magic there. 

Remember, enjoy twitter and social media fun, do not get caught in the number game of getting yourself more "popular". You can buy followers but can you buy friends and become really influential overnight? 

Mr.Smith, Why make yourself feel good only on twitter? you should really make youself feel good like... go fuck youself already.