Finding fame, and sometimes fortune, in social media

Those who have become 'internet-famous' offer insights to the use of Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr for self-promotion.

Social media has made it easier than ever to catapult from obscurity to prominence. In recent years, the web has blossomed into a more egalitarian version of American Idol, where nobodies compete for attention alongside somebodies.
Today, a teenager posting webcam videos to YouTube can get a movie deal. (For example, Fred: The Movie.)
A 30-something posting one-liners on Twitter can land a TV show on CBS: $#*! My Dad Says. Bloggers creating internet memes are being offered book deals at a dizzying pace.

However, alongside breakout web celebs — not to mention actual celebrities with huge online followings such as Rihanna and Katy Perry — there's a new class of microstars who are highly popular and viral, but have no aspirations of going to Hollywood.

 How they became internet-famous — and made comfortable incomes — offers insights to those who are unsure of how to use Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr to promote themselves or their projects.

The mobile phone quipster

Tattoo photos and stories posted by Kimber Turner on Tumblr.

Like many teenagers, Joey Mueller, 19, spends much of his time texting on his iPhone. But when he taps out a 140-character message and presses send, he's talking to nearly 400,000 people.
Mueller created his Twitter account, @itisjoey, in 2010 as he was travelling to compete at the World Horseshoe Tournament in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He figured using Twitter to comment from a big event might help him draw an audience.
"I didn't get any followers or anything," he recalls. "I guess it wasn't interesting."

Joey Mueller, aka @itisjoey. Photo: Twitter

Now a sophomore majoring in graphic design at the University of Minnesota, he decided to avoid personal messages and focus on observational humour.
Mueller says his personal Tumblr website already had 75,000 followers. He added a link to his Twitter account. Immediately, his follower count jumped. Then a curious thing happened: the numbers kept climbing. In 2012, he hit 440,000.
I'm not sure why," he says. "Sometimes I think I got lucky."
Mueller says he has never purchased followers. He says that posting from noon to 6pm, when people typically spend more time online, helps. He also routinely adopts popular hashtags, especially political ones, which he says helped get him retweeted by organisations including Move On.
The fame hasn't gone to his head, he says, or at least his parents keep him down-to-earth. "They're like, 'You know, you're not really famous. Stay in school."'

The tattoo chronicles
Kimber Turner was bored. In the spring of 2008, when she was a 22-year-old journalism major at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Turner completed all of her courses online. Which is to say, she spent a lot of time on her laptop.
Turner started killing time online by collecting found images of tattoos borrowed mostly from body modification websites. She decided to post the photos on a Tumblr account she hastily titled with an obscenity common among youthful creators of Tumblrs — personalised web pages where ephemera is deposited. In a few months, Turner had 300 followers. Other Tumblr users began emailing pictures and explanations of their own tattoos to her.
"Everybody wanted their story out there," Turner says. "People just really liked how interactive it was."
She said in 2008 she received 200 submissions a day. Four years later, she gets 350 a day. Images are contributed by fans all over the globe.
Today, Turner has more than 695,000 followers. For comparison, when Texts from Hillary went viral on Tumblr earlier this year, it attracted 45,000 followers in a week.
Her secret? Volume. She publishes about 50 photos a day, one every 30 minutes, to keep fans coming back. She also follows Tumblr's other popular users
"There's so many people on Tumblr who post all sorts of random things," Turner says. "Having a focus really lets people connect, and it's a great way to stand out."
Although she took various odd jobs after graduating in 2011, including one as a receptionist for a seamstress, ads on the site earn her $60,000 annually, she says.
"When I realised it could very well just be a full-time job, I nearly had a heart attack," she says. "Now I make more than my parents."

The hyperlocal radio DJ
Jaime Black, 29, says he has been a "huge radio nerd" since he was 15. He cut his teeth at an alternative rock station, Q101 in Chicago, where he graduated from an internship to a weekend producing job.
On the side, in 2005, he began podcasts about Chicago's underground music scene. Called Dynasty Podcasts, the episodes — 10 to 15-minute interviews Black records with local artists and club owners — were made available as MP3s on his website. The response was modest.
Five years later, when he created a SoundCloud account, he saw just how broad his reach could grow. He has amassed more than 43,000 followers on the audio-sharing website, which has been called the "YouTube of audio".
"I was very fortunate to get there early," Black says of SoundCloud, which claims to have 20 million users. "I might have beat some of the larger radio stations to SoundCloud. I didn't see that much non-music content when I started."
Today, Black posts two to 11 shows a week, which he records with a hand-held Olympus digital recorder. His philosophy is, "make it easy for people to discover the content and know right away what it is".
"I'm sharing it on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest," he says. "I don't just post things without putting some effort into the presentation. All the imaging is uniform. All the metadata is uniform."
In 2011, Black started running local event promotions, just like a radio station. He turned Dynasty Podcasts into a full-time job and said he earned $500 for one hour of work.
"A few years ago it was like, 'Oh, how cute, you have a pretend radio show,' " Black says. "And now, we just did a promotion with Supercuts."

The metropolitan paparazzo
Whenever a new digital service is started, there is a race to claim user names. In January 2011, Liz Eswein, then a senior at New York University, claimed one of the better Instagram user names: @newyorkcity.
"People have said, 'Oh, I thought the city of New York was running it.' " Eswein laughs. "It's like, nope, it's just me."
It is difficult to tell that the feed is not maintained by someone in the mayor's office. Eswein, 23, posts only photos taken in and around the city. Using her iPhone 4S, she sticks to snapshots of familiar landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and Central Park, and pictures taken at local events such as the US Open and New York Fashion Week. One of Eswein's recent snapshots of the Plaza Hotel earned 13,330 likes.
She says she often sees comments from users across the United States and as distant as Australia, South America and Greece.
"Instagram is a great way to see different parts of the world through your phone," she says, "Everyone has a special place in their heart for New York City."
Soon after starting the account, Eswein began attending local Instawalks, where users gather to socialise and take photos. The gatherings publicised her account among the app's power users.
By April 2012, @newyorkcity had 195,000 followers. It jumped to 422,000 after the release of an Instagram app for Android phones. (For some perspective, Lady Gaga's account currently has about 440,000 followers.)
In March, Eswein founded a business with two Instagram users. They now consult with brands, including Evian and Samsung, that are looking to engage users on Instagram.
Does she also keep a personal account on Instagram? "Yeah, but I don't use it at all," she said.

Benefits of Membership Sites

Five Benefits of Owning a Membership Site

If you have been paying attention to the buzz surrounding the subject of membership sites on the internet, you will have heard about the many benefits of owning one. On the other hand, if you are new to the concept, you may be wondering what the big deal is. In this article, we will go over five of the benefits to owning a membership site.
You may only charge your customers twelve payments, and after they have paid those payments, grant them a lifetime membership at no additional cost. You may opt to charge a yearly renewal fee, or you may decide to have the payments charged to them on a continual monthly basis for as long as they remain a customer. Whichever method you choose, you are creating residual income for yourself.
1. Passive Income: The first and most obvious benefit of any membership site is the passive income it generates from membership fees. The definition of passive income is “income derived from investments in which the individual is minimally involved.” To be successful, a strong initial effort is needed to get your site running and a passive income stream flowing. After that, you may well find yourself earning more and working less.

With a passive income, you can make money 24 hours a day seven days a week. Unlike a service based business, with a business that generates passive income, you can take your family on vacation and still make money while you are away from the office.

2. Residual Income: Membership sites also enable you to earn residual income. Residual income is income that keeps coming in to you on a regular basis. When you create a membership site, your customer will be paying a monthly membership fee for a time period that you designate.
3. Inexpensive To Start: Another great benefit to a membership site is that it is relatively inexpensive to start. Of course you will need to put some money into it, but if you can do the web design work yourself and choose to market your business using free marketing methods, you can get your site up and running for less than $200. That includes the domain registration, hosting account, membership management program, and any additional tools such as an autoresponder.

4. Expert Status: As your membership grows in popularity, so will your reputation. You will begin to be seen as an expert in your field. Subscribers will automatically look to you for advice and inherently trust your judgment. Essentially, you will be building and promoting your own brand. When you have a recognized and trusted brand, you dramatically increase your ability to offer other products and services under that same brand name. Because your brand is proven and trusted, your new products automatically become trusted as well.

5. Built In Affiliates: By offering an affiliate program, your customers will be able to earn income through the referrals they bring to you. If you are consistently providing your customers great content and quality information, they will most likely be happy to tell others about your site; couple that with the fact that they can make money doing that, and they will be shouting your praises from the rooftops.

When the majority of your customers are helping you to market your membership site, you will be able to reach a much greater number of potential customers than you would ever be able to reach through your solo marketing efforts. This, of course, will lead to a greater number of new subscribers and a larger income.

These are just a few of the benefits associated with owning a membership site. As you develop your site, you will see the full potential of what a membership site can offer you.

Ten steps to increase your brand’s Facebook performance by 30%

Jason Stewart (MD of HaveYouHeard) and his team of Cath Mori, Tracy Dale and Britt Adami, in an effort to understand Facebook Timeline better, tracked just over 30 Facebook Pages, both local and international (including our own Pages which we manage) over the past few weeks since Timeline was introduced. We looked at other studies done by similar agencies internationally, with our ultimate objective being to identify the best practices to use.
It has been widely established that the success of a Facebook Page is not its size, but rather the amount of people engaging with it. This is indicated by the amount of people “Talking About This” (which is measured as a percentage within our study to be able to compare pages of different sizes more accurately).
The reason why we want a higher percentage of people “Talking About This” is to ensure that the brand’s content remains in peoples’ newsfeeds. That is why a high number of “likes” means much less because if only a very small percentage of fans are “Talking About This”, your message is falling on deaf ears. Therefore looking at what percentage of your Page is “Talking about this” is a critical factor in determining your Facebook Page’s success. Anyone can buy “likes”, but it takes smarter thinking to generate higher engagement.
Buzzfeed found that after tracking 200 Pages, the average engagement rate (Talking About This) was less than 0.02%. We focused on the top pages from both South Africa and abroad and those Pages fared much better. We found the average engagement rate was closer to 5% which should be seen as an acceptable benchmark – any lower and your Social Media team needs to start thinking harder about content and engagement.
This article is focused on what we have learnt from our own experience as well as from the best practices of others. Following the advice should bring your “Talking About This” rate above the 5% acceptability benchmark.
Here are our Top 10 Best Practices for Facebook Timeline:

1. Images are in and copy is out as communication becomes more about visual storytelling. The use of pictures is incredibly important. Forget writing detailed status updates or posts, rather use pictures or specifically designed posts that translate the message visually. The implication for the brand is that more budget needs to be set aside for developing content in this way, but with higher impact you should be able to measure the ROI on your increased spend.

2. Posting Content : An entire article, or even a book can be written about this topic. The shorter the post, the better. As Buddy Media found out – 80 words or less generates around a 30% better response rate than longer posts. We must not forget that online content has become more intensive than advertising itself as people are constantly bombarded with information, from emails to alerts to articles etc. The quicker they can read, understand and respond to a post, the more chance you have of them doing it.

3. Questions work much better than statements in terms of creating engagement. Officially, questions generate around 15% higher engagement than statements. We measured it closer to 30%. However, it is not always as simple as asking a question – it is what you ask that is important. Don’t ask ‘Why’ as this requires too much thought and people will more often than not gloss over it. Rather use “When, Should, Where” etc, those that require less thinking and an easier, shorter response.

4. The type of content a brand posts is critical. This is where creativity comes into play – finding or creating content that is shareable and ensuring it drives the brand message. What we need to know about posting content is that Facebook has something called the Edge Ranking, which is an algorithm that ‘measures’ all content and judges how high up and for how long a piece of content stays in someone’s newsfeed for. The algorithm looks at the affinity between the message creator and the message receiver (how often they interact), the weight of the content (video versus comment versus “like” for example – with the more robust the content, the higher the weighting) and then it looks at time; when it was posted, with the sooner being the better. It shows us that we need to ensure high engagement with all our fans, more robust content (videos and pictures are better than copy), and that we need to post more often than not.

As much as possible, include pictures, links, thumbnail images and videos into posts as they increase your content’s Edge Ranking (interestingly videos that show the actual time length in the post have a higher engagement rate as the user can immediately decide whether they will spend that amount of time watching it).

5. When to post has become increasingly more important. Because of Facebook’s Ticker (the stories that appear on the right hand side of your page and “tick” continuously as new content is posted), posts now only have a lifespan of roughly 3 hours in a newsfeed. Therefore, posting once a day will not do, we need to post more regularly. This is one of the most neglected but influential ‘rule changers’ for Facebook, as your Page’s “Talking About This” amount will drop if you no longer post enough. What we have noticed is that most brands post between 9am and 5pm. However, a lot of activity goes on after and before business hours and on weekends. Did you know that 30% of women check Facebook during the middle of the night and again first thing as they wake up? Which brands are they engaging with then? We found that Pages that posted more often during the day did not lose fans due to ‘spamming’ them with content, but rather increased their engagement as different parts of their audience saw the different messages at different times of the day.

6. One of the areas that most brands fall short on is in how they respond on the Page. There is no reason for more than a 24-hour delay. Our aim as an agency is for no longer than a day turnaround for a response, with our goal being to respond within an hour. It is also important to continue to engage with your fans in the comments as this pulls the thread back into newsfeeds.

7. Pinning and highlighting posts makes it easy for you to pull attention to the most important content. Strategic thought needs to be given to which posts go where. This is prime real estate and your most important messaging and calls-to-action need go here.

8. Apps are a little more user friendly and can make a Page look great, whilst also helping users with their experience of a brand. It is great for redirecting users to competitions, brand or campaign websites or customer care. But what is more important is that a user’s interaction is recorded by Facebook’s Social Graph – which means that this activity gets pulled into your newsfeed, improving your brand’s exposure. Apps allow more reasons for users to engage with you, spend time on your Page and to share content with others.

9. The cover photo is the most important real estate on a Facebook Page. One eye-track study noted that users spent more time looking at the cover photo than they did at the wall posts. Good brands change their cover photo about once a week with most only changing it every 3 to 4 weeks. Much more attention needs to be given to this. Your cover photo sets the tone for your Page and just like people ‘judge a book by its cover’ so do users judge a Page by its cover photo. Pick ‘n Pay does a really great job in this regard.

10. Milestones are a great way to provide an immersion into the history of a brand. Again, great visual content can be created for this. Creatives should get involved in building up the brand story as it offers the opportunity to educate and transform how a consumer understands your brand. Ensure that the content you post is engaging and visual.

With these 10 tips, we hope you are able to improve, possibly even drastically, your brand’s performance on Facebook

How To Develop a Successful Social Media Campaign

If you’re at the beginning of your social media journey, your first question should always be about success. Anyone can throw together a social media campaign, or a campaign that uses social media – but very few people can do it successfully. In order to create a social media campaign that works (i.e. that sells and promotes), you need to know where to begin. Courtesy of make1kadaywithimmacc.blogspot.com Here is the basic social media campaign formula:Establish Brand – Gather Community – Interact, Sell, Promote. It looks simple, but it isn’t. People have problems at each step of this basic 3 step process. If your brand identity is wrong, you won’t gain a community or sell stuff – for example. Here is the right process to use when establishing a successful social media campaign.

#1: Research Until You ScreamAll great marketing campaigns are based on effective research. Know your target demographic intimately, what they want, need and are dying to learn about. Research your ideal budget, and investigate how much setting up a campaign is going to cost you. Figure out your time investment. Outline the supporting campaigns that will help fuel your social media marketing campaign – like Google Adwords. Before you begin, learn where you stand, and what’s on the horizon.

#2: Preparing Your Master PlanWhat makes your business different? How can you attract your target demographic and keep them interested? What should your brand identity be, or your writing tone? Use the research you have to answer as many pertinent questions as possible. Your master plan needs to clearly define your goals. This means knowing what you want to achieve, and then outlining a realistic plan to achieve it. Remember – failing to plan, is planning to fail! The most direct route to success is preparation, planning and research.

#3: Creating and Maintaining Awesome Content. The key to a successful social media campaign is getting the research and planning right, and then following through with consistent content creation and interaction. People respond to good content – that’s what you want! But the most important thing of course is sustainability. You need to grow your community and get them to interact. Any way you look at it, the more juicy content the better.

#4: Learning, Adapting, MonitoringThe battle is not over when you have your social media pages up and running. You need to learn all the time from the results that you get with your campaign. Use monitoring tools to track your progress, and review your campaign at the end of every month. The best campaigns are always evolving. As you learn more through application, your social media campaign will get better – especially if you’re a stickler for data analysis. Focus on developing closer relationships with your current community and others will follow. Don’t pour your efforts into growing your community just because you want to ‘look’ like a popular business. Every business is different. Yours might be perfect for Facebook, so focus your efforts there. Start with the basics – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, a blog and a Youtube channel. If you can only manage 1 properly, stick with that for awhile. In the end, when your community grows, they’ll be begging for more!

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Positive Thinking Can Make You Rich

Positive Thinking means positive changes to health and wealth.The benefits of Positive thinking As a big believer in positive thinking I have noticed how practising this amazing mind power practise has made a huge difference to my life. Not everyone who has heard of positive thinking believes in it but it works. It really does! Those who practise daily see the benefits and I am clearly not alone due to the huge amount of followers. What's more, it's free! All that baffles me is why someone wouldn't want to give it a go! At the very worst it can relax you, reduce anxiety and stress and protect your health and immune system, at best it can influence the way you think to such a high level, it can help you create openings in your life that will in turn reward you with good health, wealth and a life you have always dreamed of.
Too many people are 'stuck in a rut'. On the surface they may appear happy but deep down, wish there was more to life. Do any of the questions sound familiar?

• Do you have dreams you want to fulfill but don't know where to start to achieve them? Maybe because of a lack of money, lack of ambition or fear?
• Are you envious when you hear how well your friends are doing? So well in fact that they can afford to live the life you can only dream about?
• Do you often get stressed over money worries or your health?

Did you answer 'yes' to any of the above?

You are not alone!

We naturally assume if we have money, we are happy and our problems are over. True, money helps solve finances but, equally true is the statement 'money doesn't buy you happiness'.

Just time set aside daily, the desire to change your life, a goal to aim for and the will to give it a go.

Where do I start?

You start by learning creative visualization. There are many tips you can learn to perfect how you do this but I will cover the basics. Take some time out of whatever it is you are doing. If you need help relaxing before you begin this process, practise some deep breathing. When relaxed, you need to visualize the goal you are aiming for. If the goal is to buy a beautiful house in the country, vizualize the house. Picture what it looks like, open the door, enter each room and admire the beauty and character when you look around each room. See yourself and your family in your home. Happy, content, free from money worries. You will get this house. Visualize this daily. Don't ever let a negative thought get in the way. Now you need to believe that you will get it. Using the example of the house, believe that one day this house will be yours. If you don't believe it, you will never get it. If you believe in yourself, you can achieve anything. You will find the richest and most powerful people in the world practise positive thinking. Many rags-to-riches stories are from people who started with nothing but believed in themselves to such an extent, they made it happen. Of course there will be people who win the lottery but if you are waiting for that to happen, the odds are against you and the chances are you never will. As you practise this daily, vizualising and believing, you will actually start to see things changing. It is amazing, astounding and almost unbelievable but it works. Remember to never allow a negative thought to get in the way. Stop the negative thought entering your head. Change it instantly into a positive thought. Believe in your goal and believe in yourself.

The power of your mind:

Your mind is more powerful than you think. It influences everything about you. It basically controls you. What it can't do is think positive thoughts and negative thoughts together. One will over-rule the other. Ensure it is filled with positive thoughts and you will see the difference.If you are finding positive thinking difficult, and it really can take some practise, especially if you are used to filling your mind with negative thoughts, I will cover positive affirmations tomorrow which are very helpful programming the mind from negative to positive. In the meantime, continue with the vizualization of that dream home or whatever other goal you are looking to achieve. I ask you, what have you got to lose?

Facebook's and Twitter's Dirty Little Secret

Information recently revealed from a variety of sources suggests that a huge percentage of users on social sites like Facebookand Twitter aren’t actually human.Millions upon millions of
social accounts are either created by “bots” or have been created for some other
purpose than social networking.And I believe the problem is much worse than is being reported.
The Trouble With Facebook and Twitter
In a company filing earlier this month, Facebook reported that 83 million Facebook accounts are fake users. A social media management company called Status People created an online tool called Fakers,
which estimates the relative percentages of anyone’s Twitter following that’s fake, inactive and good.
For example, Twitter’s number-one user, Lady Gaga, supposedly has about 30 million followers. But Fakers says 71% of those little monsters are either fake or inactive. In reality, Twitter’s
number-one user has fewer than 9 million actual followers, if Fakers is accurate.
Personally, I doubt the real number of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts are actually that low. The reason is that in neither case are the methodologies used to reach these numbers transparent. And I think it’s nearly impossible to detect a well-managed fake account.
I’m certain that I could create a fake Facebook or Twitter account, visit it weekly for ten minutes of activity, and no bot or machine or survey could ever determine that it’s a fake account.
In former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s lingo, detection software can identify only the “known unknowns” and is clueless and powerless in the face of the “unknown unknowns.”
I think the percentages listed above are minimums, and that actual percentages of fake accounts is much higher.

The Fake User Industrial Complex
Where do fake user accounts come from? They come from many sources and serve many purposes. Here are some of the major sources for fake user accounts.

Fake user market: At least 58 companies currently appear online to sell fake users. Pay one of these services less than $20, and your Twitter following will go up by 1,000 users in 24 hours. A million new fake followers will cost you more than $1,300 and take a few days. You can also buy followers for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and others.

Spammers: People hoping to sell something also create fake user accounts in large numbers.

Trolls: Most online trolls have multiple fake accounts, which they use to mess with people.

Astroturfers: Anyone who wants to fake a grass-roots
campaign of some kind can higher low-cost workers to create very large numbers
of fake accounts, which they can then use to leave opinion comments, creating
the illusion that an idea is more popular than it appears. Many politicians in the US and
in other democracies are almost certainly doing this, too. For example, Barracuda Labs reported
that within a period of 24 hours during the month of June, the Twitter followers
of presidential candidate Mitt Romney grew by 116,992. Here’s the kicker: One
quarter of those “users” had joined Twitter within the prior four days.

Regular people with multiple accounts: Some “fake” accounts are merely created for a variety of purposes. I personally have created about a dozen Twitter accounts over the years for various projects. I never closed any of them.

Abandoned accounts: A huge number of social media
accounts are created, then abandoned. They’re not “fake” users, but nobody’s
home. A user is only a user if he uses.

Developers: Developers often create multiple fake
social media accounts so they can test an app or some other project.

Criminals: Identity thieves, drug dealers, terrorists -- you name it. It’s not very smart to coordinate or execute various law-breaking activities from a real social media account. It’s easy enough to just create a new fake one, and use that from a public terminal.

Social Network Founders: Reddit founder Steve Huffman admitted in an online computer science class that Reddit was launched with a large number of fake users. The two founders wrote a capability available only to them
whereby adding a user name automatically registered that username as a real
user. For the first few months, Reddit appeared to have hundreds or thousands of users, but they were mostly just the two founders. This is probably pretty common, especially for apps that interface with social networks (as many now do).

The Fake 'Like' Industry
BBC reporter Rory Cellan-Jones tested the
value to businesses of Facebook advertising and “Likes.” He created a fake company called VirtualBagel, which offered a bogus service: downloadable electronic bagels.
He bought $60 worth of Facebook advertising, and got 3,000 “Likes.”
Upon closer inspection, however, he found that many of the “Likes” were made by fake accounts, and by serial “Likers” -- for example, one fake account in Egypt that had also “Liked” 3,000 other brands.
He also noticed a wildly disproportionate number of “Likes” coming from certain countries -- Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines. A bioscience consulting company called Comprendia discovered something similar. Some 54% of “Likes” for their a company came from India,
Mexico, Indonesia, and Portugal, which collectively represent only 15% of
Facebook users. They estimate that about 40% of the Facebook “Likes” they got
were from fake accounts. Facebook recently announced
a new initiative to automatically remove fake “Likes,” which it says come from
“malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk likes.”
But this program appears to me to be more of a PR stunt than an effective elimination of fake “Likes.” For starters, Facebook estimates that “on average, less than 1% of Likes on any
given Page will be removed.” However, the actual percentage of fake “Likes” is
surely much higher, possibly as high as 40%, as Comprendia estimates.

The Fake User Problem
I believe the fake social user
account problem is going to become a far bigger challenge than most people believe.
It’s an arms race, comparable to the contest between email spammers and spam filter companies. As companies find new ways to detect and close fake accounts, the fakers will find new ways
to open undetectable ones.Fake accounts will increasingly
sway public opinion, spam social streams with sophisticated and hard-to-detect
soft pitches for products and services, socially engineer people for criminal
purposes and much more. The fake social user account
problem will be devastating for Facebook and Twitter, which will have to work
hard to convince advertisers that users and “Likes” and tweets are living,
breathing human beings, and not bots or scammers.