Report: Obama has more fake Twitter followers than Romney
President Obama has several times more fake followers on
Twitter than Mitt Romney, according to a new Twitter analysis.
StatusPeople, a tool designed specifically to check for
fake followers, finds that of Obama’s 18.6 million Twitter followers @BarackObama,
41 percent are fake, 29 percent inactive, and just 30 percent "good,"
or presumably real users.
The tool also indicates that of Romney’s current 857, 260
followers @MittRomney, 12 percent are fake, 30 percent inactive and 58 percent
"good."
Last month, the Romney campaign was forced to deny
allegations that it bought fake followers on Twitter when the number of people
following Romney’s official account suddenly spiked.
Security firm Barracuda Labs later reported that about 15
percent of Romney’s followers are “fake” or “spam” accounts, usually
recognizable by their recent creation date and lack of tweets.
StatusPeople works by analyzing a sample of an individual
account’s followers rather than measuring the full count, so the website
acknowledges that for the very popular Twitter accounts — those with more than
10,000 followers, for instance, such as both Romney and Obama — “the tool will
still provide good insight but may better reflect your current follower
activity rather than your whole follower base.”
An account with a high percentage of fake followers does
not necessarily mean the account owner bought those followers. Spam and fake
accounts are a known issue on Twitter and better-known accounts are more likely
to attract fake followers.
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