Submission + - Twitter Users Can Now Buy Followers
Hugh Pickens writes: "BBC reports that uSocial, a social media marketing company based in Australia, has launched a paid service to find followers for Twitter users for a fee of $87 for a block of 1,000. The company finds potential followers by searching through Twitter to discover areas of common interest to match people more closely. uSocial then send these potential followers a message, alerting them that there is someone on Twitter they might want to follow and the potential follower then decides whether or not to follow that person. "A woman who runs yoga classes is one of our clients," says Leon Hill, chief executive of uSocial,. "So are some religious organizations including one man that just wants to get the word out about God. Twitter started as a way for just friends to keep in touch, but as with any social media site once they get big, every business or marketer jumps on the bandwagon. It's an excellent marketing medium." Some commentators have expressed concerns that this sort of practice could lead to an increase in "Twitter spam", as users are bombarded with irrelevant tweets. "As a Twitter user, I only want to follow people whose tweets I like, and only expect to be followed by people who find my tweets worth the time," writes Harry McCracken, a technology expert. "I know that I'd rather have fifty engaged followers than 5,000 whose attention I had to pay for.""
