Buy a Twitter Zombie Posse, Get @Klout

A week or so ago, I bought Twitter followers. Why?

Well, honestly, I was bored.

Ok, and I was kind of curious after following the case of the civilly litigated Twitter followers, arguments about what they’re worth, and all of the legal implications of Noah Kravitz’s case. The snarky comment on Mashable and finding out you could buy Twitter followers made me wonder if buying twitter followers was just that cheap and easy and whether there were any benefits – and, yes, it was just that cheap and easy. The benefits?

From my perspective at the time I got them and checked over my new friends, they were essentially worthless – fake accounts with no engagement. Not real people. They did nothing but sit there. Zombies.

My Zombie Posse.

While initially, I wanted to point out the absurdity of placing a value on Twitter follower numbers, I also got curious as to whether purchasing 500 followers for $9.99 would fool any of the algorithms that are out there claiming to measure (and value) our social interactions and, to some extent, who we are on social media. Was there any real, tangible benefit to this?

On that, we now have an answer, and it is most emphatically yes.

The Initial Klout Bump

A day after I bought, paid for, and received my Zombie Posse, I had a little bit of a Klout bump, and I felt that was enough to prove that you could fool Klout, at least a little bit.

 

I was wrong, though. I was totally wrong that you could fool Klout a little bit.

I logged in yesterday to find that you can fool Klout one hell of a lot.

 

 

For $9.99 my score went from the 39’s to a solid 52 – 14 point raise in just days, and the only reason that raise could have happened to that extent was due to my Zombie Posse.

Nothing I wrote got major attention, there’s no major traffic change on my blog, Google Analytics isn’t claiming anyone is any more interested in me than they were a month ago, and I haven’t picked up all that many legit followers. Justin Beiber didn’t suddenly start following me.

It almost makes me want to plunk down another $10 and see how far it would go up again, but I am intending to delete all these and I’m already dreading removing all 560-ish that I bought for this little experiment.

I’m not curious enough to spend all that time nuking 1,000 Zombies.

The Benefits of a Zombie Posse

I did get a pretty tangible potential financial benefit from the Zombie Posse – I have far more Klout Perk offers than I did at my old number.

No, I am not going to take advantage of them. While I think it’s ridiculous it’s this easy to add value to yourself I also feel like it’s dishonest. Despite the fact that I can’t find anything that states you cannot pay someone to have their account or accounts follow you in Twitter or Klout’s terms, I just don’t think it’s ok.

Some perks appear to be valuable enough to make me break even on my $10 investment, and the companies offering those no doubt assume I am more influential than I am.

My Zombie Posse, nearly half of my followers and my entire 14+ Klout bump, will not buy their products.

OMG, you showed people how to do this!

This really wasn’t that hard to do, or come across, and anyone that would do it “for real” likely knows when, where, and how to do it or could find it pretty darn quick. 14 Klout Points for $10 is pretty cheap. (And lest people think I am picking on Klout, Tweet Grader also shot me up to the #2 most influential tweeter in Liberty Hill, so it’s not just Klout.)

I think people that will do it will do it, and if this shows anything its that you can’t judge a person by their number of followers, their Klout store, or any other BS measurement of proprietary whatever the hell that marketers seem to claim they can pare people down to.

I also think Klout needs to fix their algorithm and I hope this is seen by them – fooling them shouldn’t be this easy, and adding 500+ followers in 4 hours and then coming to a full stop should set off some kind of alarm bells. Every follower had never tweeted, had few followers – surely something could have picked up on this before it was given 14 points and a higher tier level of perks?

Maybe now that I’m rated a 52, I have enough Klout for them to pay attention.

So what’s the point of it all?

The bottom line point, in my opinion, is that connections really can’t be quantitatively measured and the qualitative judgment needed to decide what someone’s value is ain’t in a computer or algorithm just yet. If you can’t quantitatively measure follower value or Twitter account value, you sure as hell can’t put a dollar amount on it.

So, original point of absurdity from the first post stands.

It also shows that you should embrace Twitter spammers when they follow you. Those people might get you a free Axe body spray on Klout.

(For the original post and the purchasing of a Zombie Posse, see  http://scattershot.jenlepp.com/2012/01/buying-selling-and-valuing-twitter-followers/ )

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