After arriving on the webpage, a female voice begins extolling the benefits of paying for uSocial. The voice belongs to a chatbot, who has popped up on the left side of the page.
“Here at uSocial, we know the secrets to making you an overnight rockstar on Twitter,” the chatbot says, going on to promise up to 100,000 “real followers who will respond immediately to meet your market demands.”
The page lists different service packages ranging from $91.22 for 1,000 followers to more than $3,500 for 100,000. The site also has deals for Facebook “likes,” YouTube views, and Tumblr followers.
uSocial isn’t the only company taking advantage of the new field of social media marketing.
Directories like Twiends offer promotional aid for its users for a price. But the social media company uSocial takes it to a whole new level. One of their business strategies has been to compile lists of contacts and then forward their clients press releases to these contacts — for a fee.
“We’ve invested a considerable amount of resources gathering one of the most complete media contact lists in the world, which now has over 560,000 media contacts from around the globe,” says uSocial CEO Leon Hill in a May 11, 2009 press release.
The problem is determining the usefulness of these bought followers.
Janet Fouts, a self-described social media coach, spoke about her experience with paying for followers on her blog post, “Yes you can pay for followers.”
According to the post, Fouts paid $150 to a service which guaranteed her 1,000 followers within a week.
“After all was said and done, I kept just 24 ‘real’ followers out of the final download of 1,800,” Fouts wrote.
