Gone are the days when people used to think that money can’t buy friends, thanks to the social networking and emerging web concepts it is possible. Social networking giants like Facebook and twitter are the perfect platform for this kind of idea and one Australian online marketing company is harnessing this idea. It allows selling friends and fans to Facebook members after offering a similar service to Twitter users.
Because of the huge marketing and advertising potential seen here, uSocial ( usocial.net ) is targeting social networking media at a grand scale. They are offering 1,000 friends for price of $177.30 that’s quite a bargain isn’t it. If 1,000 friends are not enough and you want to increase your target audience to 5,000 then the price is only $654.30. There is also a Jumbo package available offering 10k friends for 1,167.30. Now there is real potential in these offerings and I can feel commercial companies and firms flocking to get hold these deals and start campaigning on Facebook in addition to existing Facebook ads.
It’s interesting to note that uSocial has found out that every friend you buy is worth $0.10 per month and you can recover your investment in quick time, what are the basis for this fact remains unknown for time being.
uSocial does not actually spam Facebook people instead they send them a welcome message or friend request from the client. If they decide to go ahead and add that person as a friend or a fan then they will; if not, then they won’t.
If you don’t already know, the major difference between a standard Facebook account and one in which you have fans, is that a fan account has no limit on the amount of people you can keep in touch with. While standard accounts have a Facebook-imposed limit of only 5,000, there are no limit to how many fans you are able to attract!.
uSocial offers both kind of packages for buying friends or fans, buying fan accounts is obviously more profitable.
“Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool,” Leon Hill, uSocial CEO, said in a statement. “The simple fact is that with a large following on Facebook, you have an instant and targeted group of people you can contact and promote whatever it is you want to promote,” he added.
“The only problem is that it can be extremely difficult to achieve such a following, which is where we come in”.
There is a flip side to this story as well that uSocial’s packages are not without controversy.
According to some Australian websites, Twitter tried to shut uSocial down, accusing it of spamming members, while the Los Angeles Times reported that Digg.com, a website where people vote for their top news stories or websites, has also tried to shut down uSocial because it sells votes.
Original story and copyrights of Reuters Thomson.
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Article by Muzzammil Waheed
Founder of BiGGTech.com, tech enthusiast, develops in Microsoft technologies with interests in technology, science and gadgets