uSocial – You can’t buy friends but you can buy Twitter followers
Twitter is all about making connections. These come in the form of followers, who can be known friends or simply people who are interested in what you have to say on a regular basis. And now, they can also be random people who have been spammed until they follow you. It seems although you can’t buy friends, you can buy Twitter followers.
These bought and paid-for followers come courtesy of uSocial, an Australian marketing company which has already had success plotting similar schemes on Digg and StumbleUpon. According to BBC News, uSocial is now offering the paid service for companies, commercial entities, and people desperate to reach a bigger audience on Twitter.
USocial is offering Twitter followers in blocks. One thousand followers will cost $87, 10,000 will cost $372.75, while 100,000, the biggest number being offered, will cost $3,479. The company is claiming that both businesses and individuals are signing up in their droves, with 150 customer campaigns already having been started, and another 80-90 due to be started soon.
Once signed up, uSocial will try to match Twitter users with the paying client, either by location or listed interests. It will then message those people urging them to start following the client. Which if I’m not mistaken could be described as spam. As not everyone who is messaged will follow the client, uSocial continues the process until the number of new followers paid for is reached.
This kind of service was inevitable as Twitter evolves from being mainly a place for friends to keep in touch a la Facebook to a place for businesses and commercial interests to reach their customers and drive sales and brand awareness.
The uSocial service does actually make sense for companies looking for an easy way to build their Twitter follower numbers quickly and easily. However, I cannot understand any individuals with nothing to sell or promote using this method as the followers gained from it will invariably be disinterested in what they have to say.
Apart from being a form of spam, there isn’t really too much wrong with what uSocial is doing. It’s certainly less morally objectionable than the gaming of Digg’s voting system which was alleged to have taken place last year. But that’s not to say this method for gaining followers isn’t questionable, especially if it proves successful and we all start receiving follower suggestion messages repeatedly.
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