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How much is a Twitter account or Digg vote worth? uSocial.net thinks they have the answer to that question with a recently announced new service that will sell social media accounts or votes to companies or individuals having trouble doing it the old fashioned way. $87 USD buys you (or your company) 1,000 followers added over 7 days, or as many as 100,000 over a one year period for $3,479. It turns out money really can make you popular both online, and in real life.
I have to admit however, I find it somewhat doubtful that companies would find these “purchased masses” very responsive, and in fact, uSocial itself claims “we'll Tweet our followers three times a day, every day for a month to go and check out links directly to the content that you'd like promoted.” This type of ad spam would have any normal user searching frantically for the unfollow button, but it certainly points out how modern social media is just as vulnerable to abuse as telephones, or the post office.
uSocial.net is also responsible for launching a program last year that allowed companies to buy votes on Digg and StumbleUpon. Both companies have issued cease-and-desist orders to uSocial, which according to a statement from Digg, have been ignored.
Is this the ugly side of social networking? Let us know what you think.
Comments are closed on this article
nekollx
July 06, 2009 at 9:38am
i think you forgot one of their "affiliate" sites
Maximum PC .com :P
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Vegan
July 05, 2009 at 5:31pm
I'm looking at your, MrBabyMan. The sad part is, Digg doesn't care. They read his stories sometimes multiple times a week and then act like it's a fluke.
SpazzAttack
July 05, 2009 at 3:59pm
The best description yet of those social networking web sites: Social Media Venn Diagram. ;-)
PhelanPKell
July 05, 2009 at 3:47pm
Well, my first thoughts were of the loss of integrity towards getting realiable customer reviews of a companies products and services. But, then I remembered my experiences with product reviews on ncix.com, and how obvious it is to recognize the fake ones.
Sure, businesses and people will be able to get fake followers, but will they really be worth their weight in gold, like this uSocial site thinks? I doubt it.
bingojubes
July 05, 2009 at 3:11pm
i want a new house, paid for. any company giving me that has my attention. is that even in the fine print for the user agreement when we sign up for it? i guess i never read it to find out. this is almost as bad as signing up on a website, and getting spammed emails 'cause they sold my email adress or something, of not, worse.
Lilrockerdude
July 05, 2009 at 3:01pm
Talk about spam this is the stupidest thing I have heard of. I mean are people this desperate to let someone else find followers and then have them spam the crap out of them. This would be ok if they could find you someone that can actully buy your products but then to spam them 3 times a day. No no this would be better if maybe once a week "hey we have a product out check it out" or "hey we just reviewed this brand new rig come check its specs and how badass it is." The other thing is making public and commercial pay the same this woud be better if $10 a month for public(if you really are this desprate for friends) and the $89 for commercial so they can get the word out.
WindowsXP
July 05, 2009 at 3:22pm
This pretty much sucks. I doubt that this will catch on though. Even if someone has over 5000 digs and over 9000 followers, I wont care if the content isnt good.
