Stars And Their Fake Twitter Fans

From the very beginning of the Internet being used for music promotion, artists have been trying to game it in order to gain an advantage. For some, it's a marketing advantage, for others it's an attempt to get noticed, but whether it's fake MySpace followers, fake website hits, fake Facebook Likes, or fake YouTube views, it's still fake. Now comes a Fake Follower chart from Status People that shows just how many fake Twitter followers even the biggest pop stars have.

As you can see from the chart, the worst offender is Justin Bieber, with about 45% of his followers classified as fakes. A "fake" follower classified as one who has less than one follower and has never tweeted themselves. Even President Obama has a fair amount of fake followers (for shame, Mr. President).

What the chart does prove is that Lady Gaga still has the most legit followers, with about 19 million of her nearly 36 million deemed real. That's still a huge amount of followers by any measurement.

According to Mashable, anyone can buy Twitter followers for about $1,000, but unless you're trying to impress your friends, it's probably a waste of money. Building your following organically is still the best way to promote yourself online. Always has, and always will be.

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