Pointlife
Facebook and Twitter are two of the most popular forms of communication today.
Lacking many Facebook friends? Buy some
The Pointer
jglod170@uwsp.edu
Feeling lonely and friendless? Nobody watching you update your Facebook status or following your Twitter updates? Now, thanks to uSocial, you don’t have to worry about adding people that you actually know. You can now pay this new Australian marketing company to find you Facebook friends and Twitter followers.
USocial is primarily meant for businesses wishing to market their company on popular social networking sites through friends, fans and followers as well as pushing their websites to the front pages of sites like Digg.com and Yahoo.
Many have found the idea of individuals purchasing Facebook friends to be ludicrous.
“I don’t understand when having Facebook became a popularity contest,” said Andrew Letson, senior. “I’ve got an idea for you, why don’t you go out and talk to people. What is the point of having Facebook friends you don’t even know and you’ve never even met? It’s just to make yourself look better, so that you can be the one with over a thousand friends. It’s ridiculous; it’s stupid and really, who needs 100,000 twitter followers? No one reads your twitter, shut up about it.”
Small businesses are finding this a novel idea to bring traffic to their Web sites which would otherwise take extremely large amounts of time to reach.
Facebook is the world’s fourth-most visited website and can make a huge impact in advertising to teenagers and young adults. Twitter ranks thirteenth.
“The best way to get a huge amount of traffic to your site is to have it listed on the coveted front page of one of the large social bookmarking sites,” states Leon Hill, founder of uSocial. “The thing is, it can take hundreds of votes in a short period of time to get there which is extremely difficult to obtain. But if it does happen, you can expect sometimes hundreds of thousands of people to your site in as little as one day. And for that to happen to a small-business owner, can mean serious cash.”
Due to the cost, it may just be meant for businesses rather than the average Facebook or Twitter used. Facebook friends can be purchased on many different levels from 1000 new friends for $177.30 to 5000 new friends for $654.30. Purchasing Twitter follower is even more wide ranging with levels from 1000 new followers for $87 to 100,000 new followers for $3479.
Companies make contracts with uSocial to get them friends, fans or followers and uSocial contacts individuals at random, inviting them to be friends, fans or followers of this company or person.
Most of the options give up to a year for uSocial to fulfill their end of the bargain as far as bringing in possible customers. With thousands of people register at these social networking sites daily, the possibilities are endless for reaching new prospective buyers.
“For companies it makes sense,” said Letson. “But here is a better idea. How about if you’re a company, you have a good product and then want to know what is going on with it. If you have good products, people will buy it and you won’t need a Twitter feed.”
So if you’re planning on starting your own business or just need the self-esteem boost of having 100,000 followers and 5000 Facebook friends, money can certainly make it possible, but you might want to watch out for those random friend requests from people you don’t even know. You may have just helped uSocial fulfill their contracts.
