Does It Pay to Have Fake Friends on Social Media?

Getting Paid to Tweet

• It pays to have a lot of followers.• Companies will pay celebrities a lot of money

to mention their products in a tweet.• The more followers you have, the more you can

command per tweet. • For example, Frankie Muniz has over 175,000

followers and gets paid $252 a tweet. Kim Kardashian, on the other hand, with over 25 million followers gets $20,000.

Are These Numbers Inflated?

• According to Ken Wisnefski, social media expert, many celebrities may have more fake followers than expected.

• In an experiment, a colleague of Wisnefski’s paid $250 for the promise of 10,000 new followers.

• After he attained the new followers, he analyzed them to see whether they were real or not. He discovered that about half were in fact real.

Social Media Crackdown (Instagram Purge)

Should Celebrities Stop Paying for Friends

• According to Ken Wisnefski, this will depend on external factors.

• Will companies continue to pay so much money for celebrities to talk about their products on social media?

• Will more purges occur to the extent of the Instagram purge?

• Until we know, celebrities should sit tight and see where the social media landscape takes them.