Social Media Cheats: fake Twitter & Facebook Likes

Come on, we’ve all cheated at Monopoly at least once in your life time. (Sneaked a few pink notes from the bankers coffers so you can buy a hotel on the Strand, in order crush your family into total poverty?)

“Where there’s a will there’s a way!”   A recent report out on the number of people creating fake facebook and twitter accounts, companies paying for fake followers is becoming more prevalent throughout the digital world. If you’re the gambling type, then roll the dice and see where you end up, but if you are thinking about buying twitter followers or facebook likes, I would think again, because the crack down has already started…

A recent study showed that approximately 16% of twitter accounts were participating in underground black hat social media techniques who had typically acquired on average over 400 fake followers.  For the innocent majority among you, you may also have fallen foul to fake followers or facebook likes, from  the ubiquitous internet robots, spiders and web crawlers.  So what is being done about it?  There are a number of solutions out there that have been developed like kred.com, that are analysing the data and are able to tell you which followers are likely to be fake, through the use of complex algorithms and qualitative analysis – clever stuff!

Baracuda Labs have also carried out in depth research and say that the average fake Twitter account is following over 1700 people.  Stands to reason if an accounts ratio of following to followers is very high, it’s likely they are following others based on unnatural behavior and nuisance spamming.

Many of the social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook are cracking down on fake social media accounts, and you may find that your facebook ‘like count’ may go down, as these accounts are banned and relegated to obscurity for ever.   If you check your facebook stats and see that you have a load of followers from India and Pakistan, unless you are trading in Indian tunics or kameez, it’s likely they’ll be fake, and your marketing company are outsourcing their social media effort offshore.

If you think you’ve become the subject of fake followers, report it to Twitter or Facebook.  At the end of the day, you want real friends, real followers who like your company brand for who you are.

If you require assistance with your social media marketing,  Rankability can help you.  Rob Wells is a social media analyst at Rankability, with an in depth experience in search and social media tactics (@Rankability)