No, I haven't lost my mind.
I am empathising with President Barack Obama.
Everywhere he goes.
No matter what he does.
He is shadowed. By fake people.
No, this is not a political statement. It's a fact.
19.5 million fake people follow the President every day.
On Twitter.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430875/Barack-Obama-19-5m-fake-Twitter-followers.html
Yes, of the 36 million Twitter followers the President has accumulated, over half are considered fake. 'Fake' meaning 'one which has one or no followers and follow less than 50 others. It can also be one which is used to send spam tweets or one which has never tweeted at all.'
But in the digital wild west of social media, is this distortion really a moral turpitude? Are there any truths to be gleaned from this revelation?
Has the freedom of free conversation, the legitimate virality of great content and ideas, been co-opted by marketers using shady ways to stay at the top of your Twitter Feed?
Yes, yes it has.
And it means that Twitter is officially extinct.
Because the driving force behind Twitter is 'trending'. The infamous hashtag. Twitter was supposed to be the free flow of short bites of wit, knowledge, truth, feeling, etc.
Between PEOPLE, not between MARKETERS.
With marketers buying Twitter followers to totally manipulate social media, the whole point is lost. It means that, realistically you can't be heard, because the marketers control the message. And even if, but it's a BIG if, you can break through the din of fake Twitter users, so many real users have tuned out by that point that no one is listening anyway.
But surely that couldn't mean that Twitter is marching towards doom? Surely this prognosis of extinction is sensationalism?
Sensationalism, maybe, but it is certainly interesting that Twitter has decided to become a public company now, as these revelations are starting to appear. The public share offering for Twitter, of course, has earned billions for the founders of the company.
http://business.time.com/2013/11/07/live-updates-twitter-goes-public/
Yes, Twitter has become public, just in time for the masses to not have realised that Twitter is over.
The President shouldn't feel too bad though. He's in good company.
Justin Bieber is followed by 19.5 million fake people too.
Take note too, filmmakers. How much time and energy are you going to put into becoming a social media sensation, again?
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