Recently, it was announced that Twitter was infested with fake accounts, bots that were bloating followers across the platform. That wasn't really surprising, was it? But for Twitter, trying to go public and prove that they are a player in the advertising and marketing business, this was big news.
Claims vary, but the recent claim that 10% of all accounts are fake was floating out there recently (http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/1-10-twitter-accounts-fake-say-researchers-2D11655362). Twitter, in their filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission projects only 5%.
In newsrooms across the country, there is a competition of sorts to get as many followers online as possible. Publishers compare Facebook numbers, but individual reporters are going head to head with Twitter. These raw numbers are incredibly misleading at times.
The raw numbers don't really matter - audience is what matters. Beyond that, it is the responsiveness of that audience to the message that ultimately matters. What is real, in terms of Twitter's audience, and social media in general?
For Twitter, it might be worth a quick scan of the account to see what is real. http://www.twitteraudit.com will tell you how many of the followers on your account are real.
I get the thumbs up with 94% real, though I'm now feeling the need to go out and prune that alleged 19 fake accounts on my Twitter feed.
My job is to figure out how to harness the audience of all social media, and determine how best to market the products and services of my business partners to the selected audience. The bots and fake accounts certainly make this more difficult, as I try to sell a real audience number and calculate a proper response rate and ROI for the advertiser.
The fakes are not going away. In my opinion, it is the responsibility of the marketing and media company to actively prune the dead branches of that social media tree and insure that the audience on there is as real as can be. Unfortunately, I think some companies are doing just the opposite and are seeking mass audience numbers to look good and are misrepresenting their total reach in a marketplace.
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