There was a time when we measured business success in ways that mattered like the bottom line — a good paycheck and a healthy balance sheet.
Today marginally successful people can appear important and successful just by being a Twitter John. A “John” buys a prostitute. A Twitter “John” buys Twitter whores from Twitter pimps. At Fiverr.com, there’s a Twitter pimp on every hyperlink waiting to sell you as many Twitter whores as you want.
Just by spending a few minutes Fiverr.com equivalent of the Craigslist personals, I found the following:
- 1500 Twitter followers for $5
- 2000 followers for $5
- 13,600 “real looking” Twitter followers within 7 hours for $5
I suppose a “real looking” follower is the “girl-next-door” type?
Maybe for $5, you can impress your friends and people who have no idea how easy it is get fake Twitter followers. Even guys running president tried it. Newt Gingrich said he should be the Republican nominee because he had 1.3 million Twitter followers. It turned out that Newt was just another internet John and that 92% of his followers were fake.
Maybe you’re thinking, “Mark just has follower-envy.” I have 265 followers. Real followers. I don’t get off on bragging about myself to a bunch of followers who aren’t even real. I have fantasies, but none of them involve bragging about the size of my Twitter list (real or fake).
A guy I know in the publishing business is ALL about the size of his Twitter list. I saw him a few years ago at a conference and the first thing he said to me was, “I have 5,000 Twitter followers. How many do you have?” If you have to brag about how many people follow you on Twitter, you’re a loser. Period.
In the last few weeks, I’ve had some people start following me on Twitter who have HUGE follow lists, in the 20,000-30,000 range. I then looked up their websites and in some cases their books. If you have that many followers and your book has an Amazon sales rank of 1,800,000, something doesn’t jive. That’s when I discovered Twitter pimps selling Twitter whores or worse yet, selling a fake Twitter whore.
I’ve seen some of these on twitter myself and have been spammed by them. These examples that you shared are the cheapos of the lot. I don’t remember the others since I told them to take a hike by not answering. I’ve seen some ask for hundreds of dollars. I would rather connect with REAL people who give a half a crap about what I have to say rather than a bunch of fakes. People who solicit will get busted and their comeuppance soon enough!
[...] Levine also blogs – with an attitude – at Publishing Revolution: A New Word Order. Sample post: Twitter Whores, Johns and Pimps. Sample quote: “If you have to brag about how many people follow you on Twitter, you’re a [...]
[...] Levine also blogs – with an attitude – at Publishing Revolution: A New Word Order. Sample post: Twitter Whores, Johns and Pimps. Sample quote: “If you have to brag about how many people follow you on Twitter, you’re a [...]
[...] Levine also blogs – with an attitude – at Publishing Revolution: A New Word Order. Sample post: Twitter Whores, Johns and Pimps. Sample quote: “If you have to brag about how many people follow you on Twitter, you’re a [...]