About 46 per cent of Katy Perry’s Twitter followers are fake and 40 per cent inactive, according to Statuspeople.com.
Statuspeople.com also shows that Justin Bieber’s followers are 40 per cent fake and 43 per cent inactive leaving him with 7.9 million real followers instead of the 46,521,478 Twitter reports.
Statuspeople.com reads through the Twitter followers of any particular account and determines how many of the followers are real. A fake follower is an account that has never tweeted, an inactive follower is an account that has not tweeted for at least a month. For real people, Statuspeople is a great tool for removing rubbish bots attached to your account but for popstars, the fake accounts make them look more popular than they actually are.
When you set up an account with Statuspeople.com you can put in any Twitter account and see how to comes up. For example, Perry has 46.55 million followers and has just overtaken Bieber in popularity making her the most popular popstar on the planet. Bieber has 46.52 million followers. When Noise11 put the Top 10 Twitter accounts through the Statuspeople filter, the results were staggering. Perry’s active follower figure dropped to 14 per cent of the overall reported Twitter figure bringing her real number of followers back to 6,517,082 and dropping her ranking from number one to number five.
What was even more incredible was that Twitters own Twitter account has 62% fake followers, 31% inactive ones and only 7% real followers.
It’s well known that it’s possible to buy Twitter followers – and boost in numbers of, say, 20,000 has a huge effect on your reputation and prominence. An enquiry on eBay today found that you can buy “1k Real Looking Twitter Followers” right now for $6.99, “4000 Real Twitter Followers” for $19.99 or “100k Real Looking Twitter Followers” for $69.99.
That data comes at an interesting time, just two days before Twitter is due to float on the New York Stock Exchange.
The top 10 Twitter accounts (including fake followers) are:
1. Katy Perry (46,550,588)
2. Justin Bieber (46,521,478)
3. Lady Gaga (40,406,774)
4. Barack Obama (39,305,850)
5. Taylor Swift (36,277,799)
6. YouTube (35,277,799)
7. Britney Spears (33,771,238)
8. Rihanna (32,520,734)
9. Instagram (28,742,065)
10. Justin Timberlake (28,014,645)
When only real and active Twitter followers are tallied Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake leave the top 10 and are replaced by reality star Kim Kardasian and football player Cristiano Ronaldo.
The real and active Twitter Top 10 is:
1. Instagram (10,634,564)
2. Lady Gaga (8,889,490)
3. Justin Bieber (7,908,651)
4. YouTube (7,408,337)
5. Katy Perry (6,517,082)
6. Rihanna (5,853,732)
7. Kim Kardashian (4,491,756)
8. Taylor Swift (3,627,779)
9. Cristiano Ronaldo (3,580,059)
10. Barack Obama (3,537,526)
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