Fake Twitter followers are on everyone’s mind. Last month, GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Twitter followers jumped substantially overnight, leading some to accuse the campaign of purchasing followers. They denied it for sure, however it resulted in a way more prominent discussion of the somewhat depressing reality that lots of your tweets can be falling on deaf ears. Deaf, fake ears.
A recent study into the “Twitter Underground Economy” demonstrated just how easy it’s to purchase fake followers at the site. The study found that the typical cost of shopping for 1,000 fake followers was about $18, and the typical user who buys fake followers has about 48,885.
When we are saying “fake,” we mean fake accounts conjured out of skinny air for the only purpose of boosting follower counts and egos. They’ll even be used as retweet factories, but however, who needs a faux account with out a real followers to retweet your tweets anyway-
Twitter has a bit over 140 million active users. CEO Dick Costolo said so some months ago. But some analysts have claimed that Twitter has over 500 million registered accounts. It doesn’t take a mathematician to determine that that’s an enormous percentage of inactive users.
It’s pretty clear that Twitter is stuffed with fake and inactive accounts. That’s not debatable. We thought it might be fun to observe the tip 10 Twitter accounts (in accordance with variety of followers) and spot just what percentage in their followers are fake and inactive.
Lucky for us, Status People has just released a brand new tool that permits any Twitter user to ascertain their (and their friends’) follower breakdown.
“We take a sample of your follower data. As much as 500 records counting on how ‘popular’ you’re and assess them against quite a lot of simple spam criteria,” says Status People. “On an exceedingly basic level spam accounts are inclined to have few or no followers and few or no tweets. But compared they generally tend to follow lots of other accounts.”
They also say people with 10,000 or less followers gets probably the most accurate breakdown, but they feel confident that their tool is accurate for all Twitter users. Obviously, determining what’s and what isn’t a pretend account isn’t a precise science, but Status People’s tool gives us a pleasant insight into how authentic these massive celebrity Twitter followings really are.
We checked out the tip 10 Twitter accounts in relation to follower count, and we found that that 27.1% in their followers are listed as “Fake,” on average. And a whopping 40.5% of the accounts are said to be “Inactive.” Which means that only 32.4% of the accounts that follow the end 10 Twitter accounts are “Good,” legitimate users.
Twitter Queen Lady Gaga only registered 29% “Good” followers.
The star of the head 10 was Kim Kardashian, who registered 44% “Good” followers and only 18% “Fake.”
Note: The head 10 Twitter accounts relating to followers currently belong to (so as) Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Britney Spears, President Obama, Shakira, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, and YouTube.