A British company has developed a software that would expose the fake Twitter accounts of followers being used by celebrities and politicians to promote their profile. These followers can be easily bought on the internet through dozens of websites.
One example, a site called Fiverr is offering 1,000 Twitter followers for five dollars while other sites including InterTwitter.com, BuyTwitterFollow.com and FanMeNow.com, are selling Twitter followers by the thousands.
StatusPeople, a social media management company in London has released the Internet programme called the ‘Fake Follower Check’ that can work out how many fake followers Twitter users have. This tool analyses an account’s 100,000 most recent followers.
According to StatusPeople, 70 per cent of US President Barack Obama’s nearly 19 million followers are “fake” or “inactive” along with 71 per cent of Lady Gaga’s nearly 29 million followers.
Only 37 per cent of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s two million followers were “good”, along with 30 per cent of Wayne Rooney’s five million followers, the report said.
Almost every Twitter account has a small percentage of fake followers because anyone can follow a user, whether they are a genuine friend or a computer-generated account.
Source: Google News