Have you ever wondered if the number of followers shown for popular celebrities or political leaders on Twitter is an accurate count? As it turns out, it may not be.
According to an online application known as Fake Follower Check, many of the statistics are exaggerated because the numbers are counting “fake followers” on the social media site Twitter.
Which Political Leaders Had The Largest Number of Fake Followers?
Fake Follower Check compared the statistics of many different important political leaders from several different countries including Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, India, and the United States. What their comparison studies found is that the political leader with the biggest proportion of fake followers seemed to be Najib Razak, the Prime Minister of Malaysia. According to the Fake Follower Check application, of the 1.41 million followers listed on the political leader’s Twitter page, 70% of them were shown to be fake followers.
[Recommended read: 5 Twitter Tidbits to Help You Build A Successful Twitter Community]
Coming in at a close second with 55% fake followers was Yingluck Shinawatra, the Prime Minister of Thailand. Right behind him comes the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, with 54%. United States President Barack Obama was found to have a total percentage of around half of the 13.1 million followers proving to be fake followers. This is followed by the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillared, who came in with 36% of over 130, 680 followers showing to be fake.
Source: www.meldmagazine.com.au
Which Leaders Had The Most Engaged or Legitimate Followers?
The political leaders who have been shown by Fake Follower Check to have the least number of fake followers include Lee Hsien Loonf, the Prime Minister of Singapore. Of his more than 25,000 followers, at least 62% have proven to be “good” followers. The Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe also ranked well with 58% of his 81,200 followers proving to be legitimate ones.
[Recommended reading: How to Identify Fake Online Profiles]
So What Does All Of This Mean?
These statistics basically tell us that we cannot totally rely on the number given to us by social media sites such as Twitter to provide us with accurate data when it comes to determining popularity or the influence of prominent celebrities or political figures.
Social media experts advise us that users of Twitter can actually purchase “fake followers” in numbers anywhere from one hundred to ten thousand, depending upon how much they are willing to pay for them. It is also thought that it is highly unlikely that the actual celebrities or politicians themselves, or anyone representing them, are actually the ones doing the purchasing of the fake followers. Chances are, someone else has taken it upon themselves to purchase followers for these prominent people who have little free time to look into or be concerned with matters such as to how many followers they may have on Twitter.
[Read also: How I Increase My 400 Twitter Followers by 3 Times]
When a political leader would seriously want to make an impact by using a Twitter account they would simply need to be involved and put out regular content on their social media accounts. The number of participants who engage in these conversations and who become involved with the postings is a better and more reliable indication of the popularity and influence of that person than simply counting the number of followers.
[Now read: The Use of Twitter by Politicians]
[Photo credit: Filippo Minelli, Flickr]
Hi
Yes Twitters is facing many problems With Fake followers. I have never checked the tool of Fake followers check. I would like to know how does it works !!
Cheers !!
Have fun checking fake Twitter followers with the tool! 🙂
I tried the Fake Follower Check a while back. It said 1 or 2 percent if I remember right. With all the fakers out there I was actually expecting to see a bigger number. Makes you wonder how many of them there are out there though. I know sites sell followers, and I would imagine many of them could be fake.
Mine has 7%. Looks like we are still very long way from making the top list, Ray! LOL 🙂
i don’t like politician they are always fake..
Yeah I know what you mean. Not only they are “fake”, but “evil” and “cruel” too 🙂
Thanks for providing that politicians uses fake twitter followers to attract more Media attentions. There are also so many Indian Politicians do the same thing for Twitter Followers.
Everyone uses it, Shakil! Celebrities, Football players and even bloggers too. That’s why I don’t pay much attention to these numbers be it Twitter followers, Google +1s or Facebook likes. They are meaningless to me.
This is one of the best, and also one of the saddest things that I’ve seen today. As an Australian, it also made me chuckle to see that Gillard had so many fake followers, however, not really that surprised. I also can’t believe that someone has faked over 70% of a million twitter followers, that seems like a waste to me. Thanks for finding this.
I wonder how much money had been spent to get those 70% fake followers.
Agree with you peter, now a days everything is on sale in these social networking sites, it may be Facebook likes or twitter followers( i am taking example of these two only). They use this fake data to show to the people that how many people like them or how many people are influenced by their personality. This is how they get support of more number of people to come into power.
Well, I don’t think these politicians really have the time to purchase fake Facebook Likes and Twitter followers by themselves anyway. I believe there are mostly done by someone else. However, the article is just to show that the number of followers a person has doesn’t necessarily reflect the popularity of him/her because most of the count are also potentially coming from fake accounts!
I did not say that they purchase the likes or follower by themselves peter, Of course they do not have time for these things. and about fake account, most of the people don’t know whether the celebrity has got the fake likes/follower, so they start believing in the things which comes in their way. any way thanks for replying. This post is really an eye opener for the people who don’t know about these things.
Exactly! 🙂
Can you write a post how these fake followers are actually acquired? I have no idea about this.
There are many ways to acquire Twitter followers and one of them is to use the service of Fiverr. There are many sellers who would gladly give you a huge number of followers for $5 in Fiverr. You can always ask the seller on how they will do this prior to making the deal with him/her.
Hi,
You have rightly said. But another point is, these high profile people have to go for some show business, you know this much they have fake followers..but other don’t.
Another point i want to ask you, from where you got this data, could you please share this link?
I wish to check these data for some more people around the world..
The data source is already shown in the caption.
Hi Peter,
Thank you very much for the information. The font size is too small, due to which i missed out in that images.
I was knowing that Barack Obama is in the top position in terms of twitter followers but I don’t think so politicians have such a time to create followers. I guess people around them would have created these fake followers.
Whenever I read this post, I feel quite amazed that why political leaders required fake twitter followers. I mentioned in my previous comment that it is people around them who create it but recently I read a survey regarding that and according to the survey, these political leaders own their own make fake followers in order to show their popularity.
Well, I was aware about who have largest twitter followers but it is quite amazed to see that there are people who have fake followers also.