Brisbane, Australia (ip-192.com): Don’t have enough friends to make your social life worthwhile? Well, there is an easy fix - just buy some buddies! An Australian “marketing company” tries to cash in on your shortage of friends in the real life, and currently offers 1,000 new Facebook friends for less than $200. If that’s not enough, you can buy 5,000 folks for $727. To get business going, the company offers a promotional rate through mid-September: $654.30.
uSocial claims that their service can help companies and celebrities to accumulate fans, or followers in Twitter-terms, according to an Associated Press story. Founder Leon Hill said businesses and other clients are essentially buying a base of potential customers. Companies are interested in the service because they are realizing that social media sites can generate buzz more quickly, cheaply and effectively than online ads and traditional advertising, according to the 24-year old Brisbane/Australia native.
Facebook has a different opinion. Giving third parties access to accounts goes against Facebook’s policies, said spokesman Barry Schnitt, since it makes Facebook less secure. “Sending out friend requests on behalf of others is also unacceptable”, so Schnitt.
Facebook is currently investigating uSocial’s practices, and Facebook users sharing their passwords with third parties could have their accounts permanently disabled.
Hill, who started uSocial in December 2008, has a history of “unusual” marketing practices. First, he offered customers to vote 100 times on Digg’s site for any story chosen by a client to raise its position and gain exposure for a $100 fee. $700 did buy 1.000 votes and almost certainly guaranteed a top-spot on Digg.com. Hill was ultimately ordered to stop the practice. Digg said that uSocial was breaching the sites policies. uSocial offered a similar service for Twitter for some time, basically selling followers by the dozen.
Well, we prefer to stick with real friends. While gaining their trust is much more time-consuming, real friends definitely last longer. They are their when you need them, at least some of them.
Gemini – all real, eager, and ready with no budget to buy friends or followers, but a glimpse of hope: The Word spellchecker didn’t like uSocial and always wanted to change it to unsocial. Way to go, Microsoft!
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