The Vanity of a Businessman – buying twitter users

I shall not name this British businessman. You can work it out for yourself but this is a lesson for those who think that if you have a million followers on twitter that makes you a big swinging dick. Nope, it might just be that you are a vain prick who pays a lot of money to buy followers. Buy followers you say? Yup it is perfectly possible. Just go to an agency, write a cheque and you get stacks of followers. Tell the agency how many you want and get your cheque book out. It’s simple. Nearly all the followers are bots so it is not as if anyone actually cares what you have to say it is just that some folks will think that people care what you say.

According to TwitterCounter.com, this businessman had less than 600 followers on 21st October. Thereafter he gained exactly 11,147 per day until 21st December. From then until January 10th he showed an increase of exactly 24,124 followers per day. Since then ( one assumes the contract is over) he has lost exactly 1,467 followers a day. So he now has well over 1 million followers.

Putting this in perspective: this chap is far less well known than Duncan Bannatyne who uses twitter a lot. Bannantyne has less than 600,000 followers.

What does this tell you? A) That the number of twitter followers someone has tells you nothing about how clever, funny or admired they are or how long their penis is. B) Some folks have very big egos. This buying of followers on twitter is common among those with big wallets and bigger egos. C) All New media statistics are meaningless.

This a story about vanity. But there is a serious angle. Anyone can buy twitter users or indeed Likes on Facebook. Where this is just an exercise in vanity who cares. But on some occasions (not this one I hasten to add) the intention is rather more murky. I refer you this story about pump and dump merchant Harmonic Energy, a US listed enterprise keen to snare UK investors..