By: Amanda Anderson-Niles
The world of celebrity is all smoke and mirrors. And those that write about celebs seem to learn more and more that most of the biggest stars aren’t really what they seem to be when you take away the glitz and the glamor. Since their success usually stems from their image and their legions of dedicated fans, it should be expected that they pay for good press, and some of their own record labels have even been accused of purchasing albums in bulk to save an artist’s reputation. So when it comes to the Social Networks, it shouldn’t come as a shock that a recent report found that most of the top female celebrities of today follower counts are mostly composed of fake accounts.
Social Media company Status People, created a research tool to determine the quality of followers of some of today’s biggest stars. Starlets include, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, and Britney Spears. Their findings weren’t really shocking to us, but we found it interesting nonetheless.
Here’s the report:
71% of Lady Gaga’s 29 million Twitter followers could be fake, according to reports.
The ‘Born This Way’ superstar made social networking history in March of this year when she became the first public figure to gather 20 million followers on the site, while marketing experts also claimed that the singer made $30 million (£18.9 million) via the service.
However, a study by social media company Status People has suggested that nearly three quarters of Gaga’s followers are not real but are instead either inactive or have been created by spamming computers known as “bots”.
And if you’re wondering how the followers are classified, from the real to the fake, here’s how it was broken down:
Status People’s research tool separates Twitter followers into three categories – fake, inactive and good – with company executive Rob Waller explaining to the Guardian: “A fake account is set up to follow people or send out spam. They normally have no followers, but follow large numbers of people.
“An inactive account is one in which there has been no activity for a while. They could be real people, but we would describe them as consumers of information rather than sharers of information,” he added. “A good account is everything that remains.”
The New York Times, meanwhile, also states that Twitter followers can be purchased online to boost a public figure or company’s popularity, Although there is no evidence to suggest that Gaga purchased large swathes of her followers, Status People’s research showed that out of the singer’s last 100,000 followers, only 29 per cent were considered to fall into the “good” category.
After playing with the tool, here’s what we found for Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, and Beyonce:
Rihanna’s Twitter followers are 78% bad. 38% of them are fake, 40% of them are inactive, and 22% of them are good.
Nicki Minaj’s Twitter followers are 62% bad. 23% of them are fake, 39% of them are inactive, and 38% of them are good.
Beyonce’s Twitter followers are 66% bad. 22% of them are fake, 44% of them are inactive, and 34% of them are good.
Interestingly enough, we wanted to see if this tool was fair or just some PR piece for a new company. And we figured that to be fair, spam bots follow every account right? Not just those of the rich and famous.
Here’s our results:
Surprisingly, the tool said our account is 2% bad. We have 0% fake accounts, 2 % inactive followers, and 98% of good followers. So maybe this little piece of information explains how artists can have millions of followers on Twitter, and still barely go gold in record sales.
LMAO!!!! I knew it!
This is part of the business. In today’s world, your number of Facebook likes and Twitter Followers confirms your relevance. I won’t name one of the labels I used to work for but one of the jobs of the interns was to create fake Twitter accounts and follow the artists. They do that and buy the albums too. Anything to look successful, because people like to support successful people.
Wow. I never knew this. I played with the tool, and I’m 95% good. I guess that’s good, but I don’t even tweet often.
I’m not surprised. I don’t even follow celebs like that and I find it hard to believe that most people are any different. I only hear about what they tweet from this site. LOL.
I knew this. One day I felt real stalkerish and decided to go through Nicki’s follower list. And most of them were those egg accounts. This is what they all do. If she had 1 million followers, people would say she was a flop. People are driven by numbers and illusions of popularity.
And Beyonce only has like 5 million followers. So that means she only has like 3 million real followers. Damn she fell off.
But of course. Now can someone get the digging to prove that Cash Money buys MOST of Nicki’s albums? Because I fell to believe she sales that many albums, even if this album isn’t doing that hot. Her music is terrible.
Hey, stop with your delusion. Lil Kim won’t happen. Give it up already girl.
You lack knowledge of HipHop if u think that Gimmick is better than Lil’Kim you must be new here umm that idiotic junk u she makes is called pop so stop comparing Her to the Queen of HipHop thank u #Highschoolkids smh
Yes her Nicki sh-t is garbage. Half the time hersh-t don’t even make sense. She just wack a-s f-ck……
Go ahead and add Kim Kartrashian’s a- to that list too…thanks.
This makes sense. I don’t think most people care enough to follow celebs on Twitter, right?
See, I tell people all the time that Hollywood is nothing but a show. People ain’t what they seem, and they will do anything to make them appear like they are better than the “average” folk. Most people don’t have millions of followers, but for a celeb, it’s standard. That’s just them continuing to demonstrate their superiority. And I’m quite sure this company is right when it says most of the followers are fake.
StatusPeople is BS. If what they say is true, then tons of people would be classified as fake, including myself! They will probably be exposed for the frauds that they are!
rehanna u are so real and sweet always and i like that