TechCrunch has a fascinating post about how the value of Twitter Followers has sunk to below one cent on Ebay at:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/31/twitter-followers-ebay-penny/
Here's the post:
On eBay, Twitter Followers Are Worth Less Than A Penny Each
by Erick Schonfeld on January 31, 2010
It used to be that Twitter followers were worth something, or at least people thought they were worth something, which is the same thing. It was only about a year ago when Jason Calacanis was offering $250,000 to buy a spot on Twitter’s Suggested User List, which would have guaranteed him perhaps a million followers before Twitter ended up revamping the SUL to be less monolithic. He never got on the list, but if his offer would have come to roughly $0.25 per follower.
Today, you can “buy” followers on eBay for less than a penny each. Some of the Buy-It-Now listings include 5,000 followers for $20 (which comes to 0.4 penny/follower), $5,500 for $40 (0.7 penny/follower), $1,100 for $10 (0.9 penny/follower). You are not actually buying followers outright (Twitter doesn’t allow people to transfer their followers), but rather services which “guarantee” getting your account up to the promised number of followers through “proven and safe methods.” Some even only count reciprocal followers (followers who follow back).
How do they do this? Well, there are automated bots, of course. But another method we’ve heard about anecdotally uses cheap labor in China to create Twitter Follower farms (similar to the gold farms that grew around online games like World of Warcraft). Online laborers in China essentially create thousands of Twitter accounts which can then follow other accounts. Yes, people are actually paying for this worthless service. The sellers on eBay may very well use different methods. But the fact that these types of followers are worthless shows in the plummeting rate for Twitter followers from a quarter each a year ago to less than a penny now.
So are Twitter followers simply worthless as many people have suspected all along? I think you have to distinguish between real followers and fake followers (maybe Twitter could start a Verified Follower service), and how engaged those followers are. Do they retweet a lot and engage in conversation, or never tune in at all? Follower counts don’t tell you that. Just as all Website visitors are not worth the same, neither are all Twitter followers. But you can’t buy real followers. They come to you.
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Shan (@Ramanean) - January 31st, 2010 at 9:23 am PST
Simple..use a script and follow 20,000 odd people atleast 5,000 of them will follow you back
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Shan (@Ramanean) - January 31st, 2010 at 9:42 am PST
“How engaged those followers are. Do they retweet a lot and engage in conversation, or never tune in at all? Follower counts don’t tell you that”
Retweeting or engaging in conversation is not best way to identify whether the user is active or not.. best way is to use the last login time ..something like that..
For example I never RT and seldom I engage in conversations..
But I use a twitter like a personal diary for recording my daily activities.
Is that mean I am not active?Certainly not!
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matt (@matthunter) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:57 am PST
no, but that’s a couple good reasons why you only have 18 followers.
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jason - January 31st, 2010 at 9:57 am PST
.. and their value is ?????
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Shan (@Ramanean) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:04 am PST
They have their own value..Some of them may use twitter as a medium of news aggregator so that they could catch up with all those if they are away.
In the end,It’s all about using Twitter for their own use..(Be in RT or conversations,reading news)
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David Moreno (@damog) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:03 am PST
Assumption of 25% based on what?
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Diabl0 - January 31st, 2010 at 10:14 am PST
I hate to say this but, you sound like the ‘other’ guy on (BH forums) touting a yet another script of twitter to a user. Anyway, this selling of followers on ebay has been there for almost 1 and a half years now. Well its good to see, TC finally made a report on this one.
A piece of advise on having twitter followers — It has never been about the quantity but the quality of followers. Yes, you bought 20k followers with all those BS (keyword targetted, geotargetted, niche oriented, blah blah) But in the end, the question is.. “If they don’t know you, why would they buy product from you?” Also, there’s a high probability that those people who are following you on that paid twitter account is infested with bot accounts. You know? The one that tweets countless of spammed ads…
SNAP, EPIC PAWNAGE..
Don’t be that person fooled again by scammers in twitter: http://bit.ly/twitter-myth-details
Their favorite line? I earn 1 grand a day using twitter and this amazing tool! Buy it for XXX USD.
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Diabl0 - January 31st, 2010 at 10:17 am PST
Also, one thing that I don’t realize is, why does Ebay still allows this crap service to run freely on their site? I mean, not long ago they manage to ban the selling of any digital-related content to ebay (PDF, music, video etc)
Hopefully, this nonsense escapade will be put to a halt.
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Dave Nattriss (@natts) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:44 am PST
Sure, because at least 25% of them are bots that are set to do that!
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zwinkies and winkies (@lemonknickers) - January 31st, 2010 at 9:24 am PST
no different to sites that offer fake traffic for websites by the sound of it
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Christopher (@cdnpal) - January 31st, 2010 at 9:27 am PST
Say you ran a sales leads system, and you wanted more hits to your leads.
Would you pay $40 to generate 5000 fake sales leads from people in another country who are not interested in your product?
No, you would take the $40 and pay for some Google Adwords or other CPC advertising. One click through and conversion from Adwords is better than 5000 fake leads creating noise.
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Gebadia Smith
Gebadia Smith - January 31st, 2010 at 9:31 am PST
First off twitter has a limit at 2000 and then you have to keep the number of people you are following within x amount of those following you. You have to be careful now. twitter will end up closing accounts. Besides a lot of times the people who follow you back are also selling something.. which is so fun.. the reality is twitter is only useful if you play fair. It is personal connections which makes people want to help you. The one person who did an amazing job getting twitter followers was ijustine.. she went from 100 000 to a million in a few months.
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mike - January 31st, 2010 at 9:42 am PST
Twitter is 90% noise and 10% relevant.
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Sid - January 31st, 2010 at 9:44 am PST
Everything is Business .. :( .. Twitter is boring :( ..
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sr - January 31st, 2010 at 9:44 am PST
I’ve never got buying twitter followers, or fans on facebook groups, or forum users or any of the other things. The point of having followers on twitter, fans on facebook and members of a forum (from a business pov) is because they are people you can market to. Having 5,000 followers who aren’t real people and you can’t market to are useless.
100 real followers is better than 100,000 fake followers.
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Kevin (@kevinpalmer) - January 31st, 2010 at 9:56 am PST
You are right 5K people for the sake of 5K people is worthless. The issue with these services is that they aren’t targeted at all. Targeted mass adding unfortunately works on some level. (Kind of against the “spirit” of social media though.)
It is more broadcasting versus relationship built but at some point that social proof of having so many followers takes over and if your content is good people subscribe, buy, retweet, and share.
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Hank Mobley
Hank Mobley - January 31st, 2010 at 9:50 am PST
cheap buy for the egomaniac.
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Kevin (@kevinpalmer) - January 31st, 2010 at 9:52 am PST
Well the automated issue is going to stop as of Feb 1st because the way Twitter is going to restrict their API to these services. (Which nobody has reported about.)
I wrote about it here: http://socialmediaanswers.com/is-twitter-about-to-crackdown-hard-on-spam...
It will be interesting to see how things change after Feb. 1st for people mass adding and these “services”. It looks like they are hitting programs that “churn” the accounts by unfollowing everyone that doesn’t follow them.
I guess spammer are going to have to resort to using farms (like you stated in your post) and doing it by hand because the automated process isn’t going to be possible or at the least heavily restricted.
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John - January 31st, 2010 at 11:41 am PST
Or posting their links on techcrunch, as you are clearly an advocate…
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jason - January 31st, 2010 at 9:55 am PST
Im surprised followers are worth so much. Just because that twat Calacuntus offered an obscene amount of money to extend his ego that doest mean that there is any real value associated with Twitter followers.
But lest I forget, most of you are American.
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Elliott (@elliottback) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:05 am PST
I think you want to remove some of those dollar signs; last time I checked, twitter users weren’t denominated in $.
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Kev - January 31st, 2010 at 10:05 am PST
I have 11 followers. :’( At least I’m only following 7 people, though. Gotta keep that coolness ratio going. Obviously, I don’t use twitter, though, just parking my awesome username til I can no longer avoid it, ala Facebook circa 2008.
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frank1569 (@frank1569) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:06 am PST
What many don’t get about Twitter:
A million people read the NYTimes every week, but less than .1 percent ever fire off ‘letters to the editor.’
That’s Twitter. Fake accounts aside, for the majority, it’s a spectator sport, like TV – most just like to watch, few actually make stuff to watch, and even fewer ‘interact’ via letters, comment, etc.
Metrics like ‘do they retweet’ or ‘do they mention’ measure nothing. In the marketing world, you’re a God if 1-3% respond to your latest ad, but that doesn’t mean they’re not listening. Plus, most people simply don’t have much to say, but they love eavesdropping…
The real reason Twitter followers are ‘worthless’ is because only morons follow Walmart or Bill’s Flowers or whatnot. There’s no way to ‘push’ product on people who are ignoring you…
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T-Russ (@Vanderbiltmm) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:17 am PST
In many ways fake followers are worthless. However, there are times when a crowd mentality takes affect. For example, on youtube one might be more apt to click on a video with 1 million views opposed to a video with 10 views.
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Ashok Varikuti (@drupalparadise) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:21 am PST
For someone to be on my follower’s list, they should meet the following criteria:-
1) don’t spam too many tweets daily
2) tweets should be relevant and interesting
3) tweets should help me to some extent to learn more about the unknown
If they don’t meet the above, I just un-follow them. It doesn’t really matter to me whether they follow me or not.
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Jake Smith (@jakeosmith) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:23 am PST
I like to think my followers mean something. That’s why I only follow people I want to follow.
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My Locator (tm) - January 31st, 2010 at 10:44 am PST
Twitter followers = junk bonds of the internet?
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Robert Wagner
Robert Wagner - January 31st, 2010 at 11:01 am PST
I am sorry to say this, but Twitter will probably never leave the status of being a tech saavy service. I have the feeling the curve is falling.
I do still use it because other people in my industry are using it, but trying to make fair ROI from it, is quite impossible.
FB though is much more added value and almost every target group is on their as well.
Not seeing any good times coming for the twitter founders. If it wasnt for all the bloggers and celebs it would have never come so far.
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Sean - January 31st, 2010 at 11:13 am PST
Obviously, these “followers” are worthless, as they are not real people following you. So it seems totally pointless. But if you’re an egomaniac and just want people who look at your twitter profile to go “Wow he has 5,000 followers, he must be important! *click follow button*” – this is who this service is designed for.
Either way I think anyone who would pay for such a thing is a pathetic pile of shit, but I’m just saying… there’s a reason people pay for that.
Of course, what these people don’t realize is that they could just start following a bunch of people themselves, and they’re *guaranteed* to get *real* followers back. I don’t practice such things, I like to keep who I follow very clean, but I personally know a few people who have done this and it works like magic. For some reason, a lot of people feel the need to reciprocate a follow. 25-50% of the people you follow will follow you back, guaranteed, unless your account looks super spammy. And these are real people. That’s how you do it, folks.
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Adam Boalt (@boalt) - January 31st, 2010 at 11:14 am PST
Who buys Twitter followers on eBay? I mean, really, they may be less than a penny each but they’re worth even less than that if they aren’t real people who care what you have to say.
People need to grow up and realize that Twitter isn’t a numbers game-it’s about communication.
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Google SEO Tools (@GoogleSEOTools) - January 31st, 2010 at 11:39 am PST
Twitter has a serious SPAM problem.
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Stefan Martens (@smartens83) - January 31st, 2010 at 12:30 pm PST
Well – having a lot of (even fake) followers might make an impression on people who decide whether to follow you or not. If you have a 1:1 ratio of, say, 5000 followers, people will be much more likely to follow you than if you’ve got something like 200 followers, but you’re following 500.
So, it might make sense in some cases to buy followers, but if you really have to do that, the chances are not pretty high that you’ll be able to increase the number of followers with “real” people.
Unless you provide good content which is still KING.
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Lisa Hickey (@ lisahickey) - January 31st, 2010 at 1:52 pm PST
Funny to think of people buying followers on Ebay. I suppose it’s no worse than buying an email list. But really, if people are only connecting with you because they are under a financial/contractual obligation to do so, your tweets better be darn engaging.
I like having a lot of followers because I’ve found that one in every 100 people turns into an amazing connection that I might never have made otherwise (there’s your 1% return). In every case, it’s because we’re sharing or connecting over *ideas*. As soon as that happens, we move to other platforms (email, phone, facebook) to have more in-depth discussions. The big benefit to all that as a business person is that once you DO connect with someone on a deeper level, that person will often take your message to their network, which could be thousands of more people who would never have heard of you. But that assumes the people who are your followers are trusted and well regarded in *their* networks.
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Philip Cohen - January 31st, 2010 at 2:14 pm PST
There is some suggestion that eBay feedback too is available to be “bought” at penny/increment …
Regardless, how is it that I get the impression that all “twitterers” are twits.
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mark - January 31st, 2010 at 2:32 pm PST
hwy did you use the metric of ‘penny’ rather than ‘cent’? just seems bizarre to me.
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ArticlePlaygrnd (@ArticlePlaygrnd) - January 31st, 2010 at 3:32 pm PST
Had no idea you could do that on eBaY…
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jitsnbeer - January 31st, 2010 at 4:50 pm PST
With twitter getting followers is the first step in getting a solid distribution platform. You have to have a lot of followers, but the real value is your followers engagement with you. So don’t waste your money on buying fake followers.