Now You Can Buy Twitter Followers, But Will Any Become True Fans?

/ By Bruce Houghton / in Music Business/ No comment

Several services including Twitter1K and Followers For Sale have begun selling new Twitter fans by the thousands an at least one experienced internet marketer Jonathan Volk claims to have increased his Twitter following after buying just 1000 followers.

"Before ordering this service, I had a negative trend in followers. After ordering I gained the followers that I paid for pretty quickly!" says Volk. "The way I understand the service to work is that these real people are paid a small fee to follow these people."

Putting aside the moral ickyness of buying followers and even if one could somehow "buy" the followers of a band whose fans might like similar music, it's hard to imagine that the transaction led to any true fans - fans who come to shows, tell there friends about you, etc.

Or am I missing something. Is this an acceptable way to jump start a Twitter following? How does this compare to the services who sold plays on MySpace and views on YouTube?

More: WIRED chronicles other Twitter marketing scams.