Friends, and Influence, for Sale Online

[didymus]

NY Times:

Whoever said, “Money can’t buy you friends,” clearly hasn’t been on the Internet recently.
This past week, I bought 4,000 new followers on Twitter for the price of a cup of coffee. I picked up 4,000 friends on Facebook for the same $5 and, for a few dollars more, had half of them like a photo I shared on the site.
If I had been willing to shell out $3,700, I could have made one million — yes, a million — new friends on Instagram. For an extra $40, 10,000 of them would have liked one of my sunset photos.

[snip]

But today’s bots, to better camouflage their identity, have real-sounding names. They keep human hours, stopping activity during the middle of the night and picking up again in the morning. They share photos, laugh out loud — LOL! — and even engage in conversations with each other. And there are millions of them.
These imaginary citizens of the Internet have surprising power, making celebrities, wannabe celebrities and companies seem more popular than they really are, swaying public opinion about culture and products and, in some instances, influencing political agendas.

I wonder how many friends Facebook recommends to me are fake?

 

[oneofmany]

Facebook recommends friends? I only have friends who I know personally.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

I’d like one flunky and two sycophants, please.

 

[BigShelf]

Fascinating.

 

[oneofmany]

Must be a business.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

Must be a business.

As someone who has had a hand in social media marketing, it sure is. It’s also an unpleasant one. Every system ends up getting gamed at some point and once Facebook and other social networks put countermeasures, those businesses will come crashing down.

On the bright side, I’ve seen at least one example of a local business doing it right. My local hobby shop makes use of Facebook to connect with all the top players in the city (including me ). Suffice it to say, my friend gets enough business without the use of bots and interacts with us offline as much as online. Best believe those who say that’s a real formula for success.