Want to look cool? Pay for ‘Fakesters’. (Don’t laugh, This applies to Business too)
Social Networking (I’m talking about real life) is very important to the teen, young adult, adult, and often professional. By nature we’re social creatures that want to connect and obtain a sense of belongingness. I’m one of ‘em too.
Steve Wilhelm (who’s fascinated by this site Captology) sent me this interesting YouTube clip of an upcoming service called Fake Your Space (Video) that let’s MySpace users that want to look cool (build credibility) by buying fake friends that will leave public messages on one’s MySpace blog. Online life mimics real life, so kids with many contacts will appear cooler than those that don’t.
Hey you, Mr Professional, don’t laugh!
- I know MANY instances of LinkedIn users that try to add every single email address they have to look like their networked, connected, and have a deep rolodex.
- I know of companies that hire Analyst firms to write about them, they want to get in those top right quadrants to look good.
- I know bloggers and social media types that want to get into every picture with every ‘who’s who’ party to be seen with the cool kids, I may do it once in a while too. Hollywood marriages are no different.
All of the above examples, from MySpace to Linkedin. All of the above examples are testament that social networking is a powerful human activity that is mimicked online and offline.
Credibility by association, an old age Marketing tactic.
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Of course, look at all the MySpace scripts out there as well. For the price of a $250 script I can have thousands of friends, because the script will send out friend requests to like profiles and respond to them as well. Digital Point forums has hundreds of people who brag that they’ll send out MySpace bulletins for $10 per 10K friends.
This is why I say the 12M suggested MySpace users is ridiculously bloated. I’m guessing we’re closer to 1M. TechDirt guesses 450K.
Faking it seems to be a short-term activity, with time it becomes clear who is playing and who is there present. Everything seems to be short-term oriented, but real benefits come afterwards through relationships even in the fast moving, zillions a day new applications web 2.0 world.