Simple..use a script and follow 20,000 odd people atleast 5,000 of them will follow you back

no different to sites that offer fake traffic for websites by the sound of it

Say you ran a sales leads system, and you wanted more hits to your leads.

Would you pay $40 to generate 5000 fake sales leads from people in another country who are not interested in your product?

No, you would take the $40 and pay for some Google Adwords or other CPC advertising. One click through and conversion from Adwords is better than 5000 fake leads creating noise.

First off twitter has a limit at 2000 and then you have to keep the number of people you are following within x amount of those following you. You have to be careful now. twitter will end up closing accounts. Besides a lot of times the people who follow you back are also selling something.. which is so fun.. the reality is twitter is only useful if you play fair. It is personal connections which makes people want to help you. The one person who did an amazing job getting twitter followers was ijustine.. she went from 100 000 to a million in a few months.

“How engaged those followers are. Do they retweet a lot and engage in conversation, or never tune in at all? Follower counts don’t tell you that”

Retweeting or engaging in conversation is not best way to identify whether the user is active or not.. best way is to use the last login time ..something like that..

For example I never RT and seldom I engage in conversations..
But I use a twitter like a personal diary for recording my daily activities.

Is that mean I am not active?Certainly not!

Twitter is 90% noise and 10% relevant.

Everything is Business .. :( .. Twitter is boring :( ..

I’ve never got buying twitter followers, or fans on facebook groups, or forum users or any of the other things. The point of having followers on twitter, fans on facebook and members of a forum (from a business pov) is because they are people you can market to. Having 5,000 followers who aren’t real people and you can’t market to are useless.

100 real followers is better than 100,000 fake followers.

cheap buy for the egomaniac.

Well the automated issue is going to stop as of Feb 1st because the way Twitter is going to restrict their API to these services. (Which nobody has reported about.)

I wrote about it here: http://socialmediaanswers.com/is-twitter-about-to-crackdown-hard-on-spammers/

It will be interesting to see how things change after Feb. 1st for people mass adding and these “services”. It looks like they are hitting programs that “churn” the accounts by unfollowing everyone that doesn’t follow them.

I guess spammer are going to have to resort to using farms (like you stated in your post) and doing it by hand because the automated process isn’t going to be possible or at the least heavily restricted.

Im surprised followers are worth so much. Just because that twat Calacuntus offered an obscene amount of money to extend his ego that doest mean that there is any real value associated with Twitter followers.
But lest I forget, most of you are American.

You are right 5K people for the sake of 5K people is worthless. The issue with these services is that they aren’t targeted at all. Targeted mass adding unfortunately works on some level. (Kind of against the “spirit” of social media though.)

It is more broadcasting versus relationship built but at some point that social proof of having so many followers takes over and if your content is good people subscribe, buy, retweet, and share.

.. and their value is ?????

Assumption of 25% based on what?

They have their own value..Some of them may use twitter as a medium of news aggregator so that they could catch up with all those if they are away.

In the end,It’s all about using Twitter for their own use..(Be in RT or conversations,reading news)

I think you want to remove some of those dollar signs; last time I checked, twitter users weren’t denominated in $.

I have 11 followers. :’( At least I’m only following 7 people, though. Gotta keep that coolness ratio going. Obviously, I don’t use twitter, though, just parking my awesome username til I can no longer avoid it, ala Facebook circa 2008.

What many don’t get about Twitter:

A million people read the NYTimes every week, but less than .1 percent ever fire off ‘letters to the editor.’

That’s Twitter. Fake accounts aside, for the majority, it’s a spectator sport, like TV – most just like to watch, few actually make stuff to watch, and even fewer ‘interact’ via letters, comment, etc.

Metrics like ‘do they retweet’ or ‘do they mention’ measure nothing. In the marketing world, you’re a God if 1-3% respond to your latest ad, but that doesn’t mean they’re not listening. Plus, most people simply don’t have much to say, but they love eavesdropping…

The real reason Twitter followers are ‘worthless’ is because only morons follow Walmart or Bill’s Flowers or whatnot. There’s no way to ‘push’ product on people who are ignoring you…

I hate to say this but, you sound like the ‘other’ guy on (BH forums) touting a yet another script of twitter to a user. Anyway, this selling of followers on ebay has been there for almost 1 and a half years now. Well its good to see, TC finally made a report on this one.

A piece of advise on having twitter followers — It has never been about the quantity but the quality of followers. Yes, you bought 20k followers with all those BS (keyword targetted, geotargetted, niche oriented, blah blah) But in the end, the question is.. “If they don’t know you, why would they buy product from you?” Also, there’s a high probability that those people who are following you on that paid twitter account is infested with bot accounts. You know? The one that tweets countless of spammed ads…

SNAP, EPIC PAWNAGE..

Don’t be that person fooled again by scammers in twitter: http://bit.ly/twitter-myth-details

Their favorite line? I earn 1 grand a day using twitter and this amazing tool! Buy it for XXX USD.

In many ways fake followers are worthless. However, there are times when a crowd mentality takes affect. For example, on youtube one might be more apt to click on a video with 1 million views opposed to a video with 10 views.

Also, one thing that I don’t realize is, why does Ebay still allows this crap service to run freely on their site? I mean, not long ago they manage to ban the selling of any digital-related content to ebay (PDF, music, video etc)

Hopefully, this nonsense escapade will be put to a halt.

For someone to be on my follower’s list, they should meet the following criteria:-
1) don’t spam too many tweets daily
2) tweets should be relevant and interesting
3) tweets should help me to some extent to learn more about the unknown

If they don’t meet the above, I just un-follow them. It doesn’t really matter to me whether they follow me or not.

I like to think my followers mean something. That’s why I only follow people I want to follow.

Twitter followers = junk bonds of the internet?

Sure, because at least 25% of them are bots that are set to do that!

no, but that’s a couple good reasons why you only have 18 followers.

I am sorry to say this, but Twitter will probably never leave the status of being a tech saavy service. I have the feeling the curve is falling.

I do still use it because other people in my industry are using it, but trying to make fair ROI from it, is quite impossible.
FB though is much more added value and almost every target group is on their as well.

Not seeing any good times coming for the twitter founders. If it wasnt for all the bloggers and celebs it would have never come so far.

Obviously, these “followers” are worthless, as they are not real people following you. So it seems totally pointless. But if you’re an egomaniac and just want people who look at your twitter profile to go “Wow he has 5,000 followers, he must be important! *click follow button*” – this is who this service is designed for.

Either way I think anyone who would pay for such a thing is a pathetic pile of shit, but I’m just saying… there’s a reason people pay for that.

Of course, what these people don’t realize is that they could just start following a bunch of people themselves, and they’re *guaranteed* to get *real* followers back. I don’t practice such things, I like to keep who I follow very clean, but I personally know a few people who have done this and it works like magic. For some reason, a lot of people feel the need to reciprocate a follow. 25-50% of the people you follow will follow you back, guaranteed, unless your account looks super spammy. And these are real people. That’s how you do it, folks.

Who buys Twitter followers on eBay? I mean, really, they may be less than a penny each but they’re worth even less than that if they aren’t real people who care what you have to say.

People need to grow up and realize that Twitter isn’t a numbers game-it’s about communication.

Twitter has a serious SPAM problem.

Or posting their links on techcrunch, as you are clearly an advocate…

Well – having a lot of (even fake) followers might make an impression on people who decide whether to follow you or not. If you have a 1:1 ratio of, say, 5000 followers, people will be much more likely to follow you than if you’ve got something like 200 followers, but you’re following 500.

So, it might make sense in some cases to buy followers, but if you really have to do that, the chances are not pretty high that you’ll be able to increase the number of followers with “real” people.

Unless you provide good content which is still KING.

Volume versus value online metrics…

Techcrunch today pointed out the declining value of a twitter follower based on some recent eBay prices by service providers here.  How do companies guarentee gobs of twitter followers?  Bots.  Or overseas “farmers” who create bogus account…

Funny to think of people buying followers on Ebay. I suppose it’s no worse than buying an email list. But really, if people are only connecting with you because they are under a financial/contractual obligation to do so, your tweets better be darn engaging.

I like having a lot of followers because I’ve found that one in every 100 people turns into an amazing connection that I might never have made otherwise (there’s your 1% return). In every case, it’s because we’re sharing or connecting over *ideas*. As soon as that happens, we move to other platforms (email, phone, facebook) to have more in-depth discussions. The big benefit to all that as a business person is that once you DO connect with someone on a deeper level, that person will often take your message to their network, which could be thousands of more people who would never have heard of you. But that assumes the people who are your followers are trusted and well regarded in *their* networks.

There is some suggestion that eBay feedback too is available to be “bought” at penny/increment …

Regardless, how is it that I get the impression that all “twitterers” are twits.

hwy did you use the metric of ‘penny’ rather than ‘cent’? just seems bizarre to me.

Had no idea you could do that on eBaY…

True, but Twitter should also show how many messages a user has been sent from other users.

This, along with # of followers, and # of tweets, would give a better representation of how popular and active a user is.

I suspect the follower count won’t as important in the future.

With twitter getting followers is the first step in getting a solid distribution platform. You have to have a lot of followers, but the real value is your followers engagement with you. So don’t waste your money on buying fake followers.

Does anyone do some sort of quality ranking for Twitter accounts?

I’d be more impressed with someone who had 100k active and engaged followers than someone with 1M followers who only logged in once and never again.

Well you can expect atm theres a business for everything, or almost everything, and maybe it looks stupid and worthless for average people, but im sure there is dumb people paying for this services.

Getting Twitter followers is pretty easy as thousands of twitter users follow those that follow them. So if you follow a lot of people you’ll have a lot of followers.

I think the issue is: it’s quality over quantity.

If you have a few followers who engage in your tweets, your Twitter experience is much more enjoyable to you. How much is those followers worth to you?

However if you have thousands of followers and not one of them ever engages with you (and in this case are probably just fake dummy accounts), then aren’t you essentially tweeting into a void?

With the new twitter rules I guess it will not be so tempting for people to follow a large number of people and expect a percentage of those to follow back since mass unfollow is supposed to be halted as of tomorrow.

….but nice catch by TC.
What not people sell on eBay?
I won’t be surprised if I see something like ‘This is the rock that has been compared with iPad on TC, 3 days left’, loll.

certainly agree with you but you can help them by reporting spam accounts which follows you

Quality > Quantity. Who cares if you have 10,000 followers. If none support you, dead cause.

Well these followers make no sense but to give a false projection of companies/service popularity it is good gimmick !

I wouldn’t buy “Junk” traffic, those followers on Ebay are just machines and scripts.

If you want real followers build up a real audience and a crowd that comes back a good example is right infront of your eyes.

techcrunch.com

followers from China… seriously…

How sad.

It’s like buying email addresses to spam, but you’re likely buying worthless followers that don’t even exist.

So I ask, what is the point?

Or are people that narcissistic to want to increase their folowers so they appear popular?

look-how-many-followers-I-have syndrome. Eww!

Yeah because that post is totally spam. Give me a break. I linked to something that nobody is talking about and should be talking about because it should improve all our experiences on the site.

Twitter has lost its marketers touch, due its anti self promotional policies. This was the main reason Twitter’s growth slowed down. I recently came across an article on this – http://dumblittleblogger.com/2010/01/twitter-loosing-marketers-touch-growth-slows/

remember it’s quality, not quantity.

hey… yea you the writer… what does this mean?

$5,500 for $40 (0.7 penny/follower), $1,100 for $10 (0.9 penny/follower

why do you have dollar signs everywhere,

We like to promote the use of our tool to allow people, especially local businesses, to be able to engage with their audience in a real conversation versus just mass adding hundreds of people and spamming them. As everyone else has said, it is quality over quantity and takes time to manage. Our application allows the user to target others based on interest and geographical location.

For more social media news + twitter tips, check out our blog as well: http://flashtweet.com/blog/

You wanna know how I know you’re gay?

I agree with Chris Dixon’s position on this article …

RT @cdixon: It’s all about TunkRank RT Twitter Followers Are Worth Less Than A Penny Each http://tcrn.ch/9HsdyQ by @erickschonfeld

@erickschonfeld have you seen TunkRank? We measure influence by how much attention
your followers actually give you http://tunkrank.com

There is another way of buying worthless followers on the cheap. Your can give away some “prize” at random intervals. Guarantees you followers like flies. One selfprofessed photo “pro” occasionally gives a way a camera or gadget (on the expensive end gadgets retailing at $2700, but more often cheaper stuff) HE has 62000 followers and gives away about one gadget every 1 to 2 months. His example shows that this method will give you followers at $0.04 each or less. The drawback is that you have to keep the stuff coming, as many will unfollow. Others will forget to unfollow. Of course hardly any of the “followers” have any other interest in the postuigs than to win the freebie.

Yeah, but that 10% that is relevant consists of links to blog posts.

A verified follower badge would be an excellent idea. TechCrunch- make it happen.

If someone wants to pay for followers, then Twitter should be happy about it cuz it can only mean that Twitter can find a way to make money from the fake followers business…by taxing it for example!

This is a total nonsense who on earth would want to buy a bunch of dummy followers? I can’t believe that are people doing this kind of crap. When is twitter implement a system to verify email addresses before they let them be an authenticated user?
IMHO all twitter wants is to show that they have millions of registered users to say wow we’re one of the most popular sites even though lots of those accounts belong to the same people.
Like I said, this is a total nonsense.

[...] matters On February 11, 2010, in social networks, by sem Why are people buying and selling Twitter followers on eBay? Because in a networked economy, size [...]

I have a number of social media sites and have had a number of so-called followers that l call – fair-weather followers as like the weather they come and go. I would as this article prefer to use the sites like twitter to follow really interesting organisations like yourselves and obtain a real good insight into the tech and social media market. Exactly 3 years ago this week l started on the internet and knew nothing all l could do was use Virgin on 2 mb broadband to look at sites.

Now 3 years later l have reach a point whereby l have built gadgets and joined small news groups and even attempted understanding developers and l am considering taking a software developers course in order to build my own news platform.

So l used social media as a springboard for improving my ability to build a network of sites and bloggers and will eventually progress to my own interactive website and software development team, but l needed the knowledge of what was happening on the web to make this all possible.

Thank you Techcrunch and Team. Ian

[...] il y a aussi des sites comme Tweecha… ou encore eBay ! Sur le site de vente aux enchères (sur ebay.com, sur ebay.fr, je n’ai rien trouvé), on vous [...]

Simply use this free Twitter-Service called Tweepi http://www.tweepi.com and you can see/sort your twitter followers ranked by RTs/Tweets, last login for the last 7 seven days…

Hope this helps in finding the REAL followers ;-)

I purchased 5000 twitter followers from socialkik.com and they try to keep it deliver very quickly, which is positive impact on my online business! I started receiving more consumers and better conversion rate because of the big number of followers which enhanced my reputation! I highly advise them: socialkik.com

When l started using twitter a couple of years ago all people said was get a twitter account and you can get 1000`s of people to follow you. Then join Facebook and get people as friends and so forth and so on and on. Great but l found twitter useful to join and follow people like Techcrunch or other similar organisations and also l learned a lot about software and how to build a network. So is the same with ebay and l prefer to build my own followers, l have a few but they get their products featured and also l put them on my blogger business site and feature their tweets as a thank you for free. As l also have with other people that provide good honest services. I also try to notify people as soon as that their is a trojan or spyware threat and give good site advice or downloads that we have tried and tested and worked. This is more important than buying my followers.

There is a huge difference between working to get “Targeted” followers, and “Un-targeted” followers. Any person or business that is marketing a product or service should concentrate on finding relevant followers. Getting 5000 “Targeted” followers is extremely valuable. However, it is also important to be tweeting about relevant topics that the “Targeted” followers will be interested in. While many people criticize Twitter, it is really the people who make their own account what it is. The potential is massive for people who truly understand how to use Twitter.

Twitter becomes so more interesting for businessmen. But without good content normal persons will in the future better select their new contacts.

Im surprised followers are worth so much. Just because that twat Calacuntus offered an obscene amount of money to extend his ego that doest mean that there is any real value associated with Twitter followers.
But lest I forget, most of you are American.

What use is a bunch of followers that have no real interest in you or what you do/offer anyway? OK if you have a product seriously in demand, but are the buyers really coming from Twitter?

Worthless followers are worthless try to just build up your followers the old fashion way.

I totally agree, this is worthless. Either they use a script or create Twitter farms or use existing ones.

no different to sites that offer fake traffic for websites by the sound of it