Mitt Romney Twitter: Buying Fake Followers Won't Get Him Into The White House

By Donovan Jackson

Aug 06, 2012 12:15 PM EDT

As the popularity, usefulness and social dependency increases for the social networking site, Twitter. A new trend is emerging; buying followers.

The trend is being noticed to be used by major companies and politicians. Mitt Romney has come under fire by the website 140elect.com. The site claims that Romney had been averaging 3,000 to 4,000 new twitter followers per day for much of July, but in just three days, July 21-23 he gained more than 130,000 followers.

The Atlantic website analyzed the new accounts that followed Romney in such a short time span and noticed that the new followers had five or fewer followers of their own. According to the website, this is a sign that Romney's new followers are Twitter bots. These "bots" will not retweet, share your content or mention you on Twitter.

Other public officials with suspicious activity on Twitter include, Newt Gingrich after he quickly gained more than 1.3 million followers while running for the GOP presidential nomination.

News giant CNN is also rumored to have jumped on the buying bandwagon and amplified their twitter presence this way.

Getting More Followers without People Actually Liking You

A lot of different websites offer relatively low prices for lots of followers on Twitter. By researching Fiverr.com for just five dollars you can get up to 1000 followers and for even more money you can get up to 25,000 followers.

According to Catriona Harris owner of Uproar PR "Social media is all about building relationships with your audience." Her firm specializes in helping companies develop their web and social media presence. "You aren't doing anything if they are fake people, I'm of the belief it doesn't provide any sort of validation."

The idea that buying fake followers will cause "real" ones to follow as well can be considered a rational thought or theory similar to the old saying "monkey see, monkey do."

However people that heavily engage in the social media world are not fools and question many things when sudden changes occur. Gaining thousands of followers in a couple of days would prove suspicious to many who use Twitter profoundly "it just wouldn't look right."

Buying Twitter followers can be compared to cheating at a video game. You might win at what you were trying to accomplish, but you still do not know how the game is supposed to be played.