So you’re a politician and you want to have “friends”… or a rich and famous actress and want to have followers on your Tweet. Well there seems to be answer for you… that money can buy.
https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
I’m sure MechanicalTurk is not the only service.. but I had an “innocence lost” moment for social networking. Here are some of the buyers listed on mturk:
- www.overtimesportswear.com is pay $0.01 if you become a fan. If you post a positive review, they will pay a bonus (not stated).
- http://whoozy.com will pay $0.20 if you tweet about them
- Elki Media will pay $0.15 if you follow them on twitter
How many decisions are made based upon following a crowd. Swarm intelligence is particularly relevant here. How do people decide to follow a crowd and what events trigger it? Do consumers “trust” because the swarm is around it? This is not necessarily something new, as mainstream media has “defined” many issues that are probably not issues at all. It’s a media swarm that sometimes takes hold.
For financial institutions, PR, brand and marketing managers should be on top of swarms effecting their institutions. When swarms develop, customer facing employees must have responses to customer questions/concerns, and legal should be prepared to react to any disparagement. A very good tool to keep track of brand use online is MarkMonitor.
As a consumer, I found issues surrounding the portability of trust very interesting. We have credit bureaus and bank services like ITAC to manage financial identity theft.. perhaps there will be more services like http://trureputationscore.com/ to assess your online reputation. Many employers today take a look at services like LinkedIn and Facebook to see what kind of network you have… Perhaps they don’t know that now they can be bought.. .
Other Reading
Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust