fake accounts
The Olympic Athletes’ Hub launches, giving fans behind-the-scenes access to London 2012
thenextweb.com
When we recently spoke to Alex Huot, the Head of Social Media at the International Olympics Committee, he clued us in on one of the major features online fans can expect from London 2012 – the Athletes’ Hub. With exactly 100 days to go for the start of the big event,...
And here it is, the Pope's first tweet
thenextweb.com
We knew it was coming, it was just a matter of when. The leader of the Catholic church has just tweeted for the first time. Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from...
Facebook trashes fake accounts, users, and likes
news.cnet.com
As the social network sweeps clean all bogus activity, page fan counts drop by the tens of thousands. [Read more]...
10 Things You Need To Know This Morning (MSFT, AAPL, GOOG, YHOO, FB, ZNGA)
www.businessinsider.com
It's a good morning...unless you're Steve Sinofsky. Stay with SAI for lots of news today. In the meantime: In a shocking twist, Steven Sinofsky, the man who was supposed to be Microsoft's next CEO, is out. Meet Julie Larson-Green and Tami Reller, who now run Windows. Here is Microsoft CEO...
Facebook Launches Verified Accounts and Pseudonyms
techcrunch.com
Facebook, a service built on real names and real identities, will tomorrow start allowing prominent public figures to verify their accounts and display a preferred pseudonym instead of their birth name. Those with verified accounts will gain more prominent placement in Facebook’s “People To Subscribe To” suggestions. Verified accounts are...
Mitt Romney suspiciously gets 116K Twitter followers in one day
news.cnet.com
A new report shows that 15 percent of the Republican presidential hopeful's Twitter followers may be from paid fake accounts. [Read more]...
Report says 15 percent of Mitt Romney Twitter followers are paid fakes
arstechnica.com
Barracude Labs More than 15 percent of Mitt Romney's Twitter followers may be generated by paid services that use fake accounts to artificially inflate the number of people subscribed to the presumptive Republican nominee for US President, according to a new report. The report comes from researchers at security firm Barracuda...
Operation Unlike Is A Go: Page Fan Counts Are Dropping Because Facebook Is Deleting Fake Accounts
techcrunch.com
Some Facebook business Pages lost tens of thousands of fans today, but they shouldn’t fret. Facebook has confirmed with me that it’s currently purging fake accounts and Page Likes as it implements site integrity improvements announced last month. You can see the evidence on Pages like Zynga’s Texas HoldEm Poker...
The next billion: Facebook offers $1 credits for mobile signups and referrals in India
thenextweb.com
Apparently Facebook isn’t content with 1 billion users and it’s turning to mobile subscribers in India to fuel its growth. Facebook is offering a Rs.50 ($1) credit to new users in India that sign up on their mobile phones and another Rs.50 for referrals, Machine Happy reports. The offer is...
Want to know how many of your Twitter followers are fakes? Try this app to find out
thenextweb.com
Without question, there are quite a few spammers on Twitter. These fake accounts make you wonder how many active people truly do follow you on the service. Ever since people started talking about Facebook’s fake account issue, the spotlight has now been turned to Twitter. Is it full of “fakers?”...
Buying Twitter Followers? Beware StatusPeople, The Service That Exposes Social Media's Black Market
www.fastcompany.com
Late Sunday afternoon my friend @caronsue (2477 followers) posted a photo on Twitter displaying her StatusPeople "Faker Score," revealing that 96% of her followers are good, 3% inactive, and only 1% fake. While 2011 was the year of Klout, the popular service that calculates a user's online influence, this new...
Twitter cedes to government demands and blocks fake accounts in India
thenextweb.com
Earlier this week India’s government fired a broadside at Twitter for its lack of cooperation in assisting removal of a number of accounts that were misinforming people of violence against Muslims. Now it seems that the company has heeded that warning and, as Pluggd.In reports, a number of accounts, including...
Roughly 20 Percent Of Pinterest's Top 10 Users' Followers Were Spammers And Fake Accounts
techcrunch.com
Last week, Pinterest began curtailing the number of spammers and fake accounts on its system, in an effort to clear its platform off unwanted elements. At the time, the company noted that this latest big sweep would mainly affect those with larger follower counts, or those who had purchased fake...
Caught Blue-Handed: Someone is Buying Mitt Romney Twitter Popularity
techcrunch.com
It looks like someone made the colossally silly decision to buy Mitt Romney Twitter followers. Earlier this month, Romney saw an implausible spike of 150,000 Twitter followers, and many of these likely fake accounts had less than 2 followers, according to some crack reporting by The Atlantic. It is unknown whether...
Asma al-Assad's aide persuaded Twitter to remove fake accounts, emails reveal
www.guardian.co.uk
Twitter removed all but one account using Syrian president's name and half of those using first lady's after complaintTwitter closed down a string of accounts purporting to be authored by the Syrian president and the first lady, emails reveal.A senior aide to Asma al-Assad, Fares Kallas, took issue with the...
Which Company Twitter Handles Have the Most Fake Followers?
www.businessinsider.com
As Twitter becomes a more and more significant component to companies' marketing campaigns, brands covet their hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of followers. But how many of these followers are real, engaged consumers versus fake accounts? Business Insider recently wrote about a new app that calculates how many fake Twitter accounts are following...
55,000 Twitter Accounts May Have Been Hacked
www.businessinsider.com
Hackers have released more than 55,000 Twitter usernames and passwords, according to online security focused blog, Airdemon. However, this may not be a real "hacking." It may be some weird prank. We heard about the hacking when a reader sent us a link to the site. We've reached out to...
Facebook estimates 5 or 6 percent of total users are fake accounts
www.insidefacebook.com
Facebook says 5 to 6 percent of its 845 million monthly active users could be false or duplicate accounts, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This means the company estimates between 42 and 50 million accounts are illegitimate. In its updated filing for an initial...
Facebook's war on zombie fans just started with a boom
venturebeat.com
Rihanna’s down 22,000 fans, and so is Shakira. Lady Gaga is liked by 32,000 fewer people today, and Zynga’s Texas HoldEm Poker is down by almost 100,000 fans. What’s going on? Facebook is starting to crack down on fake users, fake accounts, and fake likes. This is not new; the...
Twitter Has A Big Problem With Fake User Accounts
www.businessinsider.com
Everyone knows there's a sordid industry around selling Twitter followers. But on Friday, Jason Ding, a researcher from security vendor Barracuda Networks, quantified how bad the problem is for Twitter and how these guys fly under the radar. For 75 days, Ding investigated the fake Twitter account business. He and...
How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts
motherboard.vice.com
Is Reddit the most powerful website on the Internet? Yeah, that’s a pretty bold question to even be asking, especially considering it’s only ranked 121 on Alexa. But in terms of power, not traffic, Reddit is certainly up there. It’s huge, it’s deep, and it’s got an uncanny ability to...
Facebook Succeeded Because Of A Tiny Feature Everyone Else Overlooked
www.businessinsider.com
A lot of startups couldn't exist today without Facebook. But what could Facebook not have existed without back in 2004? Paul Graham, co-founder of the world-renowned startup accelerator program Y Combinator, asked Mark Zuckerberg this question last Saturday. Zuckerberg replied: school email addresses. Before Facebook, there weren't any online communities...
This App Lets You See How Many Fake People Are Following You On Twitter
www.businessinsider.com
There are over 500 million Twitter accounts. But in that huge number, you've probably noticed a bunch of so-called bots, or fake accounts that are controlled by an algorithm designed to spam us legitimate Twitter users. If you're curious about what kind of Twitter accounts are following you, check out...
Facebook now asks for more details when users report fake or abusive accounts
www.insidefacebook.com
Facebook has updated its user flow for reporting fake or abusive accounts to include clearer options that could improve the level of feedback Facebook receives. It’s unclear exactly when Facebook made this change, but now when users click “Report/block” from a user’s Timeline, they have the option to fill out...
How paying $18 can get you 1,000 fake Twitter friends
www.bgr.com
Companies desperate to raise their social media profiles and lonely shut-ins looking to have more connections online can now pay just $18 to get 1,000 fake accounts to follow their musings on Twitter. Network World reports on a new study from Barracuda Labs showing that the average Twitter “dealer” has around...
True Story: What Happens When You Buy 70,000 Twitter Followers
www.businessinsider.com
We've already reported that Twitter has a big problem with fake accounts--and that it's become big business to sell these fake accounts to people looking to boost their Twitter followers. So what happens if you violate Twitter's terms of service and buy followers? The answer: Not much, according to a guy...
Facebook completes test asking you to snitch on your friends, has no plans for a broad roll out
thenextweb.com
Last week, we wrote about a controversial prompt Facebook was testing. Essentially, the social network was asking users to snitch on their friends if they weren’t using their real name. Menlo Park today confirmed with me that the test is complete. As such, nobody on the service should be getting...
Software: Poll of Twitter Bots Finds Obama in the Lead
www.wired.com
President Barack Obama at the APEC Summit in Yokohama in Japan in Nov., 2010. Photo: White House/Pete Souza Here’s a late-breaking election poll for you. Twitter bots are choosing Barack Obama over his presidential challenger Mitt Romney by a significant margin. That’s according to an analysis of the 200,000 most-recent...
Fake Twitter celeb accounts: why do people bother?
www.guardian.co.uk
Cheryl Cole, Katie Price, Amelia Lily. They've all had to deal with the odd, er, twimposter. But perhaps their days are numbered"Someone's got a bit too much time on their hands!!" As a pithy, dismissive response to online endeavour, it has to be up there with the classic "Yawn ..."...
You Don't Happen To Follow This Twitter Account From 2007, Do You?
www.businessinsider.com
The oldest known fake Twitter account @krails was created on Jan 15th, 2007. You don't happen to follow it, do you? Twitter suspends fake accounts when it finds them. Problem is, it can't always find them. The news that this account was fake first broke on Friday. That's when Jason...
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