IS TWITTER FAKING IT?

Twitter is planning on raising $1 billion or more in a public offering. While they have lots of growth, they are losing more money ($69 million, pace of its user growth is slowing, and ad prices are coming down. So will the world of retweets, hashtags and decks ever by a great marketing tool for your business? Plus, how much traffic on Twitter is real, and what’s being driven by computerized fake accounts?

As reported by the Wall St. Journal, Twitter is populated by millions of accounts of questionable legitimacy. “They range from entirely robotic (and often incomprehensible) spammers to more cleverly programmed accounts spitting out tweets designed to find their way into the occasional search results or discussion thread.”

Main reason these bots exist is the fast growing market of buying and selling Twitter accounts. Just like email addresses, junk mail marketers can buy Twitter accounts. Another reason for fake tweets is that it so easy to create and automate tweets, thanks to the way Twitter allows automatic posting using third-party applications.

So the question for the week: Let me know how many followers you have and if you have found that your Twitter account is creating real business.